May 2022 Summaries

Sending photographs of government IDs to businesses or delivery drivers can expose consumers to identity theft, as illustrated by a 2019–2021 scheme in which alleged fraudsters photographed customers’ IDs during alcohol deliveries, altered them to create fake licenses, and used them to establish rideshare accounts that were leased to unvetted drivers. The case surfaced after victims received incorrect tax forms reporting rideshare income, highlighting weaknesses in identity and contractor-screening controls. The passage argues that companies should prevent workers from collecting customer personal information on personal phones and instead use consumer-controlled, secure digital verification systems that authenticate ID documents, check for tampering, conduct liveness detection, and compare a user’s selfie with the ID photo. It further promotes Socure’s predictive document-verification products, which combine document and biometric checks with device, phone, address, and external data signals to assess fraud risk, support compliance, and approve legitimate users more efficiently.

Dwellsy, a U.S. digital rental marketplace founded in 2019, aims to create a fraud-free environment for renters and property owners in an online rental market affected by fake listings, spam, duplication, and identity fraud. To address fraud before listings are created rather than at the transaction stage, the company adopted Socure’s identity verification and fraud prevention platform, including tools for third-party and synthetic identity fraud, device intelligence, email risk, and phone risk. Dwellsy reports that the implementation captured 464% more fraud, reduced false positives, and increased automatic approvals for legitimate rental applicants by 90%, while reducing onboarding friction and manual review requirements. The company also uses Socure’s single API and predictive document verification capabilities to consolidate risk-management tools, supporting its growth and trust-focused strategy in the more than $500 billion U.S. rental market.

At MeridianLink Live! in Huntington Beach, credit union and lending leaders discussed the accelerating shift toward digital account opening and lending alongside rising identity and fraud risks. Participants reported increased new-account fraud, bot attacks, call-center account takeovers, geographic variation in fraud rates, and widespread synthetic identity fraud, particularly in indirect auto lending. They also cited high rejection and abandonment rates from existing customer identification and fraud-prevention tools, with thin-file applicants—including younger, older, immigrant, underserved, and minority consumers—especially affected. Many credit unions expressed interest in lower-friction, passive identity verification and authentication methods and dissatisfaction with knowledge-based authentication, which can inconvenience legitimate users while remaining vulnerable to fraudsters. Socure, a newer MeridianLink partner, said its ID+ identity-verification platform, including KYC, fraud detection, risk scores, and document verification, was scheduled to become accessible through MeridianLink’s products in the second half of 2022.