How is a person’s digital identity verified?

We are completing more and more operations through the Internet, but we are also increasingly worried about the security of our data.

Transactions are increasingly easier and more convenient. We enter our name, email address, credit card number, and shipping information, and we check out. But, how does a company know that we are who we claim to be? Is it really that easy for someone to steal our identity and pass for us?

The fact is that, although identity fraud is still a very real problem for people and companies, identify verification techniques and online fraud prevention are growing more sophisticated. In short, and without going into detail to avoid giving ideas to potential scammers, these are some techniques that, combined, are used to verify a person’s identity online.

Identity document

When an identity document is authenticated, two factors are validated. First, it confirms that the document is authentic and not a forgery. Second, it confirms that it corresponds to the real identity of a person, who is who the person claims to be (it confirms that the person is real, alive, and the person represented by the document).

1. Security measure authentication of the document, such as the kinegram or details inserted with ultraviolet or infrared ink.


2. Reading all the data fields, including the full name and the OCR-B font.


3. Verification of data in official databases to verify that the data has not been falsified or stolen.

Physical identity

This is an essential step in the process of verifying the person’s physical identity, i.e., knowing who is really on the other side of the operation or transaction that is being completed.

1. Biometric facial recognition with a selfie. This is a quick and simple step for the user. In addition, new technology allows for a much more reliable verification than the visual recognition done by a person.


2. Comparing the selfie with the ID photo With a reliability index of more than 99%, this indicates if the person is the same one in the identity document.


3. Liveness testing to see whether the person is real, i.e., to make sure it’s not a photo of a photo, for example.

Digital identity

The third step is the connection between the person’s digital identity and real identity. The algorithms that conduct this verification are complex and sophisticated, and they perform the following, among other elements:

1. Validation of the phone number and email address connected to the operation, i.e., the ones that the user provides.


2. Geolocation of the user, to see if his or her movements are coherent.


3. Social Network Analysis of the user.

How long does it take?

Digital identity verification procedures are getting faster and easier for the user to perform. There are fully automated solutions that allow users to conduct an onboarding process or open an online account in less than 20 seconds.

Is it really reliable?

The current technological solutions are much more reliable than any manual verification, for example. For ICAR, the identity verification solution has a reliability index of 99.8%.

Benefits of digital identity verification

For the company, the automated identity verification technology improves the user experience, as it allows users to complete registrations and transactions much more quickly and easily. This drastically reduces abandonment of the onboarding process. In addition, it helps reduce online fraud, a problem that leads to millions of euros in losses each year for the financial sector.

For the user, in addition to ease of use, these systems increase the security of personal and financial data when the user performs an online operation, and they reduce the risk of the user’s identity being stolen.