The Non-Intuitive World Of Authentication And Social Media

A cyberthief walks into a bank branch, fully prepared to impersonate his intended high-net-worth victim. Not only is he equipped with fake IDs in the victim’s name, lots of personal information courtesy of social and search engine research, but the thief has even taken the precaution of breaking into his victim’s social accounts and replacing his thief-like face for the victim’s on the victim’s own social sites. If anyone tries to check on the Facebook or LinkedIn site of the victim, the thief’s face would be confirmed.

The banker in this case sits beneath a tiny video camera, one that is aimed at the seat where customers sit and specifically the facial area of those customers. Controls of the banker-facing screen allow the image to be precisely aimed for customers of varying heights. And while the banker is pitching her safe-deposit boxes and other bank services, software does a quick check on the thief’s face. Sure enough, it matches the social media images—but the software notes that those images were all recently changed. The software’s database maintains a record of the last 10 images of everyone it can find—and that history of images foiled our thief’s efforts.

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