Your identity is essential to everything you do in today’s digital world; it is what allows you to engage with other individuals or organizations by first establishing  who you are and what you have. This plays a critical role for entities to validate your identity for the services and products you wish to avail from them.

Identification means establishing a direct and accurate relationship between a document (passport, driver’s license, etc.) and the person presenting it. This can be done through simple visual inspection or using more sophisticated techniques such as biometrics including fingerprinting, and iris recognition.

Top Identity Verification Methods

Proving your identity is a critical step in almost every transaction you make. When you apply for a job, open a bank account, buy insurance, or rent an apartment, someone must verify that you are who you say you are.

Identification is tied to the concept of validation. One’s identity can be validated in many ways:

Knowledge-based authentication: This method asks the user a personal question that they should know the answer to, such as his or her mother’s maiden name, a social security number, or a pet’s name. With this method, the user tends not to forget such essential and/or personal details.

Two-Factor Authentication: This is a way to protect your computer or account by requiring two different methods in proving your identity. Two-factor authentication works by logging in to your computer, then typing in your password as the first level of authentication. Then, instead of immediately gaining access, the user will be required to provide another piece of information which is typically about something you know (i.e. personal identification number, keystroke patterns, or answers to “secret questions”), or something you have (i.e. something in your possession like credit card or smartphone), or something you are (i.e. biometric patterns, iris scan).

Credit Bureau-Based Authentication: This type of authentication is used by nearly all major eCommerce sites and financial institutions. Using this method of authentication, a company verifies a customer’s identity by matching their credit history and other data from a credit bureau.

Biometric Verification: This form of identity verification uses measurable and verifiable human characteristics, like fingerprints, voice patterns, veins, and facial recognition, to confirm identity. Biometric technology is used in various industries, from health care to transportation.

The Problems That Arise With Identification

Identity verification is a common practice in the online world to protect users from identity theft, fraud, and money laundering.

Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes worldwide and affects millions of consumers and businesses each year. Aite Group reports that 47 percent of Americans experienced financial identity theft in 2020. They found that losses from identity theft cases cost $502.5 billion in 2019 and increased 42 percent to $712.4 billion in 2020 due to a high number of unemployment identity thefts caused by the economic recession during the pandemic.

Moreover, the current “user experience” of online identity verification suffers from a lack of convenience, privacy, and security. For example, when users register for a new account in an e-commerce site or government service, they need to go through the tedious steps of entering their personal information into multiple fields (e.g., name, address and password), signing up for an account, and providing a phone number for SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA). They will have to repeat this process every time they need to log into the service.

Additionally, even though the second factor helps protect users from the risk of being hijacked by attackers via password theft, it is not without its problems either. For example, users are required to keep track of numerous 2FA codes that expire after some time; some may forget them or lose them.

With all the risks associated with online transactions, it is vital for both businesses and consumers to implement reliable methods of verification.

A Better Way To Prove Your Identity

A person’s digital identity allows entities and users to securely share and communicate their identities, attributes, or credentials to one another. It solves the problems of digital trust by providing a portable, secure, and unique identifier for people, organizations, and connected devices.

This technology gives users control over how they authenticate their identities online, making the process convenient, and secure while getting their private data more protected. Digital Identity Verification will also free up time spent on administrative tasks like account management, credential generation, and password resets so users can get on with doing what matters most instead.

One trusted method is the decentralized system, which generates cryptographic proofs of your identity based on claims issued by trusted parties—such as banks, government, doctors, or other companies—and enables secure, scalable, and privacy-preserving interactions between peers.

An example of this advanced technology is the Q-Servi platform, which provides solutions that enables organizations to issue a single, reusable, decentralized, digital credential that can be used to verify an individual’s identity without openly revealing sensitive information.

The platform allows organizations to confidently share personal data with other entities without exposing individuals’ identities. The digital identity and credentialing solutions offered by Q-Servi can be used to verify a user’s identity in any industry, including travel, health care, and education. With this technology, the user controls his or her personal data and makes it available only to chosen entities given access.

Simply put, these new decentralized digital credentialing systems provide a cheaper, more secure, and more private alternative to today’s ID verification processes. With billions of dollars worth of value at stake and already so many players involved in the ID industry, it seems inevitable that decentralized digital credentials will soon be an integral part of our online identities.

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