Identity theft is one of the issues that most occupy Mexican financial institutions, since the country ranks eighth worldwide in this crime, according to the Bank of Mexico.
There are many ways in which criminals try to obtain the information necessary to make an attempt at identity theft or fraud, but in general we can point out three ways: physical theft of information, identity theft through the technologies of the information and deception by telephone or in person.
"People whose identities have been stolen can take months, even years, and spend part of their assets cleaning up the problem that thieves have made of their good name and record in the credit bureau," warns the Association of Banks of Mexico in its website where it shares recommendations to take care of our sensitive data, such as name, addresses, telephone numbers, RFC, bank account numbers, card numbers, access codes and PINs.
But beyond what is in the hands of the clients (which is not little), banks have invested a good amount of resources in recent years to develop technologies that keep our money safe, including biometric controls in branches, ATMs automatic and digital channels.
Unlike a password that can be changed for another or that confidential information can be stolen through deception, biometric data is a physical or physiological property trait that cannot be altered, since it is unique to each person.
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Your money safe in your hands (or, rather, in your fingers)
The use of the fingerprint is the biometric technology most recognized by bank users because it was the first to be used and it has proven its effectiveness for some years: once the bank has registered and validated the customers' fingerprints, This support is used to verify that the characteristics of the ridges and valleys are the same as those of the person who presents to carry out a procedure.
Another of the innovations of this type that is beginning to be in common use is voice recognition or “voice print” with which the frequency, speed and accent are verified to match those of the registered customer.
The most recent biometric option is facial recognition, which is already used by some banks to identify the client through their
smartphone
: it is analyzed that the facial features coincide with the registration, that is, that there is the same distance between the pupils, the position of the nose and in general the dimensions of the face.
It is one of the most modern and secure means of authentication, as they cannot be violated with tricks such as using a photograph (to validate the procedure it is necessary to blink).
They may steal a statement or your card, but no one can steal "your face."
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These technologies to keep our money safe will be increasingly common in our lives and it could even be said that mandatory: as of November 30, the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) will require banks to capture the fingerprint of users who open an account or credit.
The idea is that the next step is to register the fingerprint, face, voice and even iris of all bank users in order to minimize the risk of identity theft.
Who would have thought, five years ago, that we could manage our money just by "making eyes" at our phone.