Facial Recognition: Privacy Concerns and the Dangers of Misuse
Facial recognition technology is now a hot topic. The size of the global facial recognition market overall is expected to grow from USD 3.8 billion in 2020 to USD 8.5 billion by 2025. It’s important, in this context, to address the privacy concerns that come with this technology.
On the one hand, facial recognition is seen as highly efficient. On the other hand, there is a concern that the inaccuracies inherent in these systems.
If many of us admire facial recognition as a cute feature on our smart devices, face verification function is so important for digital identity security. Next to global security, automated KYC verification is the best use of face verification. As part of your user or customer onboarding strategy, this verification can be part of your permanent digital identity security system. In banking or other high-risk industries with assets to protect, global ID verification will give your face verification system an added edge in terms of asset protection and transaction monitoring.
Facial recognition and face verification are used almost interchangeably, but they are not quite the same thing. Face detection uses biometrics along with various algorithm techniques to identify a face. Based on the type of algorithm, it can detect motion, skin and eye color, and the full face from a distance. Some algorithms can also unravel blurred images, and adjust for lighting sources, backgrounds, and other people.
Facial Recognition vs face verification
While facial recognition is used to find a face in a crowd, video, or image, face verification pushes the algorithm further to match the physical face to a known identity. Face verification uses biometric authentication to verify a person’s identity against known sources. Simply put, it matches your live face against credible sources whereas recognition involves identifying the face, be it live or not.
Misuse of data
This technology, as all others, was not immune to judgmental bias. It recognises white men more readily than women or other ethnic groups. In 2018, 35% of facial recognition errors happen when identifying women of color, compared to 1% for white males. This bias was reduced through training over time, but it is still there and very difficult to eradicate completely.
At least 72% of people are worried about how their biometric data might be misused or stolen, according to research from business app discovery and analyst platform GetApp. Twenty-five percent do not trust this technology to use or store their data in a legal and safe way, fearing third party or criminal use of the data. Some are also concerned that criminals could hack software and steal their biometric data.
Besides all these concerns, biometric identification is the future of digital identity security. And though using the last thing that is uniquely yours to safeguard your personal and business data, seems like taking an unnecessary risk, done correctly it can be the highest form of protection you’ll have to date.
Find out more about KYC meaning on our website and use the QOOBISS solution for your business. We use high security procedures for personal data collection, processing and storage, with the latest encryption technologies.