A common need in the data industry is to be able to verify a person’s identity. It’s not always possible to sit across from them at a desk, scan their driver’s license, and verify whether they’re legitimate or not. More often than not, the business is attempting to verify the identity of someone they’ve never had a real interaction with at all. So how is this done?
There are two main types of identity verifications that are available in the marketplace today. The first is more commonly called “document verification” – this involves getting a scan of an authoritative ID (driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, etc.) and verifying whether it’s an authentic document. These services can be costly, time-consuming, and usually involve having direct contact with the individual.
The other type of ID verification is a verification of the data itself. This is typically referred to as a “KYC” or “Know Your Customer” solution. It solves for questions like: Does the data that the individual provided actually match to a real person? How confident are you about that? Are there any warning flags that we should be aware of as we engage with them?
USInfoSearch offers the latter of the two options. We have direct to billions of data points concerning for identities of the 99% of US population. And because of the way our product works, we’re able to confirm the identity while minimizing the exposure of sensitive information. Let’s dive a bit deeper!
First, the Identity Verification product is primarily a Batch and API product which is designed to process your data behind the scenes and return it to your system. It’s a hands-off experience. You’re not required to log into a web portal, type in a record, or anything of the sort.
Instead, your system can send an API request to USinfoSearch with all of the individual’s information – whatever data you have on them. That can be a name, DOB, SSN, address, phone number, email address – really whatever you have. Our system will then take that information and run it against our datasets, comparing it to billions of similar records.
We’ll then send you a series of match flags. These match flags will tell you things like:
- Did the name match exactly? Fuzzy match? Partial match?
- Did the DOB match? Just the age?
- Was there a full match on the address? Was the address you provided the current one or a previous one?
- Did we see an excessive number of phone numbers or SSNs attached to the individual (sometimes indicative of fraud)
From there, you can make an informed decision about where to do next. This service is not intended to replace any business processes but rather automate them and take a lot of the manual work out of the workflow. We always recommend that you maintain your existing manual processes for when an individual does not pass through the automatic verification.
So the last question that people often ask is where this product is most commonly used – and that’s a good question! It can be used in so many applications that it’s hard to focus on any one of them. The most common we see is for e-commerce and age verification. There are a lot of use-cases in which you’ll want to verify a person’s age or identity prior to allowing them access to your products and services.
Another common use-case for this is to pre-process individuals through your system before running more expensive products on them. In the background screening industry, for instance, a full background check can sometimes cost $50-100 dollars. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that you’re not wasting $100 on a fake applicant?
Again, we always recommend that you have other mechanisms in place for people who do not meet your business criteria for a successful verification. This product is meant to eliminate a lot of the manual work that would normally be involved.
And as always, if you’re interested in this or any other USinfoSearch solutions, please contact our sales team. We’re always happy to help you discover a product that works for your business.
In the coming months, we’ll talk about some of the other technologies used in identity verification – including document verification, phone apps, and liveliness checks.
