KYC-Chain adopts Passive Liveness Detection to prevent identity fraud

This monthly update takes a look into how passive liveness checks help prevent ID fraud.
Presentation Attacks - These essentially involve using either biometric data belonging to someone else to create spoof ID versions – or creating digital/physical fake photos or ID documents using image manipulation that are then used to complete a KYC process. KYC systems usually compare a selfie picture against a picture on an ID document If they both match then the step can be successfully completed.
However, for obvious reasons, if the identity is fake then the process can be fraudulently passed, even if the system has done its job correctly in the likeness comparison.
In order to counter the threat of presentation attacks, a KYC process needs to be able to verify that the applicant is in fact real - in other words, to evaluate their ‘Liveness’. The first approach that was developed came to be known as Active Liveness.

This is a type of onboarding process that directs the applicant to complete certain prompts during a selfie check, such as turning their face left and right, etc. The problem with Active Liveness is that it can be annoying – users are often unable to quickly satisfy the prompts, which leads to high abandonment rates during a KYC process. From a business perspective, this is highly problematic, as a customer who abandons a KYC process may very well simply move on to a competitor.
In order to address this friction-heavy approach to Liveness, a new process has been developed: Passive Liveness. It determines whether a single frame in a captured and/or submitted selfie image or video is genuine. It brings some key advantages:
It significantly reduces friction and abandonment rates in the onboarding process
By evaluating images or videos automatically, it significantly reduces processing times and data transmission, making onboarding processes ‘frictionless’
It prevents fraudsters from understanding the verification process, making it harder for them to “hack” the system in the future.
Last year, KYC-Chain rolled out the Passive Liveness feature on our end-to-end onboarding solution.
Interested in using Passive Liveness for a KYC process that is secure and frictionless? Get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to talk about how KYC-Chain can make it happen.