I’m (well I was, I’m not any more) trying to open a bank account. They want me to verify my identity, fair enough, but the only thing they will accept is a live selfie. No taking a photo and uploading it, has to be live. No other option, no “if you can’t do that contact us on…” just an assumption that people can and are willing to do that. Since I’ve failed to do it I’ve got 3 text messages all reminding me to verify. Nobody has thought to actually give me give me a call and find out what the problem is. They’ve lost quite a hefty investment due to this nonsense to their competitor with slightly worse rates.
I can kind of see the logic here. I assume the point is to compare it to the photo on your ID. So they need to make sure the photo you send them is truly a photo of you, and not a photo of the person whose identity you’ve stolen that you downloaded from their Facebook page. If you physically went to a branch, they could simply look at you and look at your ID, but I assume you’re trying to open it online and this is the technological equivalent.
I have no idea what a “live selfie” is. Some banks allow you to open an account online, without walking into a branch, but in any case they are legally required to verify your identity (name, address, birthday, etc.) so there is a video call involved, it’s not enough just to send them a photo of [someone’s] passport/ID.
You’ll be thankful for all the headaches when you hear that someone else’s identity has been stolen and all their checks are being deposited in the fake account.
Sad but true that the bad guys make things hard for the good guys!
And it’s not “a video” it’s a “selfie”, but has to be one being taken at that instant. I don’t have the tech or inclination to do that. My PC doesn’t have a webcam and my phone is a basic camera phone which I don’t surf the web on.
How would they be able to determine the timestamp? Taking a selfie and sending an instant text would be easy for me but it would seem that it would be just as easy to pretend to take an instant selfie as it would be to pretend to send an old picture. (Hmmmm, maybe if they made you hold up a sign with a captcha written on it and only gave you a minute to do so, that might tax the 'shopping abilities of most hackers.)
Which isn’t to say I’ve never sent picture proof of something, just not something that was purported to be instant.
I don’t know how it works other than I can’t upload a file, and given I do my internet on my PC and picture taking on my phone and not vice versa I have no idea what they can determine, but it is a ridiculous pseudo security measure that cost them my business.
My guess is that you use their website/webcam or phone app/phone camera to take a video of yourself when you press the big red button. Then the AI or maybe a person takes a look to see if your video image is reasonably like your ID card image.
Phone images come with a time stamp. I assume there’s an App to fake the time-stamp. Maybe the bank only wants crooked customers who are smart enough to operate that App.
I’m so old-fashioned I don’t use plastic except at an ATM machine(*), and it would never occur to me to open a bank account other than in person. But I guess the cool kids these days pay just by holding up their smartphone’s bar-code for cashier to scan!
Speaking of plastic and ATMs, I’ve asked before and never gotten an answer: Where I live I can get $2000 (equivalent) cash at almost any ATM, or transfer that amount to a stranger’s account. Is that also the case in U.S.A.?
As an aside I did want that account so I walked into town to their branch, ID in hand, and was told to wait. 30 minutes later, with people who had arrived later than me having come and gone I walked out; so their in-branch account opening is as fucked as their online but bad service in branch is not something new and worth starting a thread about.
I guess I’m the opposite. I’ve never opened an account in person and I don’t think I’ve actually been inside a bank branch since I was a child being dragged around to boring errands. I was looking for a new bank a couple of years ago, and I tried to open an account at a small local bank, and…I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. There was no application form! Eventually the light bulb went off and I realized that you were meant to actually go there. They lost any chance of getting my business with that BS. (I just checked again, and they’ve now joined…the 1990s? Early 2000s?)
Or they could just ask you to take the selfie in a particular pose, or holding the id in a specific way, that is selected at random from a large pool of options at the moment the selfie is requested.
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