The social storm is brewing. We are in the epicentre of a social revolution. Or are we? Can imagine a time when you make payments through your Facebook profile? Syncing personal, financial information to verify your identity?
Is it a credible solution, or is it a process with many flaws? This very subject was debated in our latest #FutureofID chat and the jury was out.
Q1 Is the general public ready to use social data for ID Verification? #FutureofID
— Experian ID & Fraud (@ID_and_Fraud) July 27, 2016
Trust was one factor raised by a debater. Whilst others saw social media as the future due to its position in society today, that is only becoming more and more integrated. As the debates continued the jury was still evidently split. Education vs. unknown were high on the thoughts of the panel.
Not sure, e.g. would people want to share their Facebook account with random organisations to verify their identity? I wouldn’t. #FutureofID — Martina Dove (@curiousshrink) July 27, 2016
@jmlw1 They would still get data that has nothing to do with ID verification, which could be misused for fraud. #FutureofID
— Martina Dove (@curiousshrink) July 27, 2016
@ID_and_Fraud No – not enough of the population use social platforms for it to be a single source of truth #FutureofID — Kirsty Terry (@KirstyRowena) July 27, 2016
A good point raised was about the public’s understanding of fraud – and its apparent risk too. Some people assume that social data would automatically be classified as high risk. As it would be unknown as to whether the person using the log on credentials is who they say they are – is the profile even an actual person or a person made up purposely to feed criminal acts such as fraud?
@ID_and_Fraud Public wants to use it but isn’t ready for the consequences of compromise #FutureofID — Jonathan Williams (@jmlw1) July 27, 2016
@ID_and_Fraud Is the general public fully aware of ID fraud? Year upon year we see increasing ID fraud. #FutureofID — Arjun Medhi (@ArjunCIPFA) July 27, 2016
@RH_Experian @ID_and_Fraud Interesting point, this would exclude many people from this type of verification. #FutureofID — Martina Dove (@curiousshrink) July 27, 2016
A common thread was debating the general public themselves – are they ready, are they familiar, are they close enough to be able to make a decision, an educated decision? It brings the point – is the profile even an accurate reflection of the individual or did they purposely bypass / mistype fields in an attempt for their actual data thread to not be seen by anyone in cyber space? Or more, so be used by anyone for marketing – or criminal purposes. As such, having to make sure a social profile [through education too], is a true reflection of an individual can have its own challenges as it may not be an easy transition if the majority of held data isn’t even reflective of the individual anyway?
@nesteroaa @jmlw1 I suspect misuse of other data for fraud, such as photos, friend etc. But also for marketing purposes.#FutureofID — Martina Dove (@curiousshrink) July 27, 2016
Other points were raised around how many people actually use social platforms? They may have an account, but are they regularly used and updated? Are they used for professional purposes or as a means of keeping in contact with friends and family? We’d like to thanks all of our participants for a great debate, and invite all the readers who haven’t taken part in the debate yet to join and have your say.
Join the #FutureofID debate on social data. Vote now to have your say! https://t.co/XfA4N7qdBt pic.twitter.com/3kh3SWLp7L — Experian ID & Fraud (@ID_and_Fraud) July 7, 2016