ID.me Confirms Technology Partnerships With Paravision and iProov

ID.me is reaffirming its commitment to inclusive and ethical identification practices. The company recently became the official identity provider for the IRS, and currently provides identity services for 10 federal agencies and 30 states.

Given its popularity with the public sector, ID.me needs to be able to guarantee that all citizens can take full advantage of its services. With that in mind, the company offered some more details about its platform in an effort to build trust with the general population.

In doing so, ID.me revealed that Paravision is its facial recognition technology provider. Paravision was the most accurate solution in the NIST’s most recent FRVT evaluation, and has displayed minimal (and statistically insignificant) demographic bias in independent testing with the NIST and other state and third-party agencies.

In plain terms, that means that ID.me’s solution should perform well for people of any race, age, or gender. ID.me has also partnered with the iBeta-approved iProov for liveness detection.

On the privacy front, ID.me stressed that it does not sell any of the personal information it collects, and that end users retain full control of their data when choosing what to share with other organizations. The company does not perform 1:N facial recognition, and instead only performs 1:1 face authentication using technology that compares a new face to one already registered in the system and associated with one account. ID.me pointed out that many people already use similar technology to unlock their smartphones.

With regards to utility, ID.me went on to explain that the vast majority (90 percent) of the people who register for an account are able to do so online through the company’s self-service portal. The other 10 percent can either go to one of ID.me’s 650 in-person locations (run in collaboration with Sterling), or register through a video chat with a “Trusted Referee.” ID.me argued that its identity verification services are more inclusive than those that rely on credit bureaus and data brokers, since those alternatives often overlook unbanked individuals or exclude people with poor credit histories. The company offers support for 16 languages in video chat, and nine languages in the online self-service portal.

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January 27, 2022 – by Eric Weiss