Authorities uncover scam for taking out loans with someone else's identity

An online scam for taking out loans in someone else's name was uncovered in Plovdiv. Three people used face verification to take out credit in other people's names.

Facial recognition is considered a method that actually provides the highest level of security. Only human recklessness can facilitate the commission of crimes, experts explain. The technology works so that each subsequent use of banking services compares whether the person is the same as the one who was captured at registration.

"This effectively stops the possibility for another person, even if they have tricked someone into registering on someone else's device, to use someone else's registration on that someone else's device, to be used for fraudulent purposes," explained Prof. Georgi Dimitrov.

State institutions are required to use a biometric pin with facial recognition. In the private sector, however, this may not be applicable, which enabled the fraud in Plovdiv.

"In the private sector, everyone struggles to make it as easy as possible for service users to access services quickly and conveniently, i.e. not to create additional requirements for them. But this additional requirement is of course not used at the expense of security. In the case cited, that is what has happened. In effect, signing was enabled without the user being asked to show their face at the time the signing of documents took place and that is why it happened. In practice, this is an isolated case," said Prof. Dimitrov.

The company that developed the programme points out that almost all banks in the country use facial recognition for online banking. And others intend to introduce it. To maximise customer vigilance, the software specialists have also introduced new features, including more on-screen guidance messages. The technology has also received high praise.

"It was unanimously accepted by the EC experts that the technology is at one of the highest levels of security," added Prof. Dimitrov.

However, the advice is one - never provide personal or biometric data to suspicious people and organisations.

"The highest level of protection is vigilance and one has to ask questions before they give information," said programmer Tsvetan Filev.

Thanks to new technologies, such scams are easily detected because any criminal action can be traced and eventually be prosecuted.