Stopping Digital & Printed Forgeries: Intellicheck's AI-Powered Doc Liveness for ID Verification

As online transaction volume increases, remote identity verification has become vital for businesses. However, the prevalence and convenience of remote ID validation has also opened new avenues for fraudsters. The ease and low cost of acquiring, using AI to create, or altering fake driver’s licenses and other identification documents create a growing challenge for organizations that verify identities remotely. This escalating problem demands a solution that can distinguish between a genuine, physically present, and unaltered document and a sophisticated fake.

The Evolving Threat: A Fraudster's Playground

Traditional methods of remote ID verification are proving insufficient against the array of "presentation attacks" that fraudsters now employ. It’s no longer just about poorly forged documents; the threat landscape is far more intricate. Consider these common tactics:

• Screen Replay Attacks—Here, a fraudster holds up a phone, tablet, or monitor displaying a photo or scan of a genuine document, rather than presenting the actual physical document to the camera.
• Printed Photo Attacks—High-quality printouts of legitimate documents can easily fool basic image-based verification systems that merely check document features.
• Portrait Substitution Attack—This involves presenting a physical document where the portrait (face) has been edited, either digitally or with a physical copy of somebody else’s face.
• Cut-and-Paste Fraud—This involves combining elements from multiple documents or overlaying information, and presenting this composite fraud through a digital display or a printout.
• Synthetic IDs—Perhaps the most alarming fraud tactic is the creation of realistic-looking IDs using Artificial Intelligence (AI), which are then presented digitally or as a printout.

By default, all Intellicheck customers use Intellicheck’s Authoritative North America License Barcode verification. Only Intellicheck knows the proprietary and unique security features for each of the 250 current license and ID formats issued by US states, territories, and Canadian provinces. This is an incredibly powerful and efficient fraud detection tool.  However, when remotely onboarding employees, contractors, or customers, it can be difficult to recognize a forged ID when a fraudster has included a real DMV barcode by using one of the above fraudulent techniques.

Intellicheck's Game-Changing Solution: AI-Powered Document Liveness

Today’s doc liveness solutions rely on rudimentary methods—such as parallax effect and focus variations to detect depth—while others impose additional steps on the customer, forcing them into interactive challenges such as covering part of their ID or rotating it for multi-angle capture. Although these methods attempt to deter screen captures or printouts, they also add significant friction to the customer experience.

This is where Intellicheck Document Liveness steps in, offering a robust and seamless answer to these complex fraud challenges. Its core capability is to signal, in real-time and with minimal customer effort, that a real, three-dimensional physical document is present in front of the mobile phone camera, rather than a flat reproduction.

At the heart of Intellicheck Document Liveness are advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. These powerful algorithms are only trained on millions of real and fraudulent documents to identify and keep up with advances in fraudulent identity creation. This capability is crucial for staying ahead of the constantly evolving techniques used by fraudsters.

The AI/ML system performs a sophisticated, multi-faceted analysis, examining a wealth of crucial details that are invisible to the human eye or rudimentary systems. This includes:

• Paper texture
• Natural lighting variations across the document surface
• Micro-movements
• Document edges
• Backgrounds
• Ambient light
• Shadows

The comprehensive analysis returns a document liveness signal, verifying that the ID document is unaltered and physically present and eliminating the threat of a printed reproduction or digital forgery being shown on a screen, for instance a cell phone, tablet, or monitor.

A Powerful Combination: Liveness and Barcode Analysis

What truly sets Intellicheck apart is our integrated approach. Document Liveness is not a standalone feature; it is an integral part of the comprehensive Intellicheck Verification Service. This means it is always used in conjunction with the industry's only proprietary analysis of DMV-issued ID barcodes. This dual-layer verification significantly reduces risk by ensuring that the document is physically present and unaltered, and also that it is authorized by the issuing authority. This powerful combination provides the most comprehensive identity verification solution available, stopping presentation attacks at the very start of fraudulent actions and safeguarding your business from identity fraud.

Tangible Outcomes: How Your Business Benefits

Implementing Intellicheck Document Liveness translates into significant advantages for your organization, and creates a strong return on investment (ROI) through multiple key outcomes:

1. Fraud Prevention and Loss Reduction: Organizations can dramatically reduce financial losses from identity fraud by catching presentation attacks before fraudulent accounts are created or transactions are processed. This proactively prevents downstream costs such as chargebacks, account takeovers, synthetic identity fraud, and the expensive remediation processes that typically follow successful fraud attempts.
2. Improved Customer Experience and Conversion: Legitimate customers benefit from a faster, smoother onboarding process. Real-time verification requires minimal effort—customers simply present their ID to their phone’s camera or upload an ID picture. This significantly reduces friction compared to cumbersome manual review processes or complex multi-step verification, leading to higher conversion rates and improved customer satisfaction, all while maintaining robust security.
3. Operational Efficiency and Cost Savings: Automated liveness detection reduces the need for manual document review, thereby reducing operational costs and freeing up valuable staff resources. The AI-powered system processes verifications instantly, eliminating bottlenecks in customer onboarding, account opening, or transaction approval workflows, while maintaining consistent accuracy that scales seamlessly with your business growth.

These outcomes work together to create a strong ROI through reduced fraud losses, increased legitimate customer acquisition, and lower operational overhead.

How to Get Started

Intellicheck Document Liveness is an additional fraud detection signal for both existing customers who are currently using Direct, Capture, or Portal for remote ID verification without Doc Liveness, as well as new customers considering how to best detect fraudulent IDs early in their workflow. It demonstrates the added value of reducing risk without introducing additional customer friction when customers are already scanning their ID.

In essence, adding Intellicheck Document Liveness like having an expert gemologist verify a diamond—not just by seeing its surface sparkle, but by its molecular structure, subtle inclusions, and how it interacts with light to ensure it's the real deal and not a cleverly crafted imitation.

Intellicheck identity-verification experts partner with you to find the optimal solution to fit into your current workflows and tech stack. Contact us to get started.

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