identity – Page 16 – Bredemarket

The NIST Test You Choose Matters

(Baby smoking image designed by Freepik)

As I’ve mentioned before, when the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tests biometric modalities such as finger and face, they conduct each test in a bunch of different ways.

One of the ramifications of this is that many entities can claim that they are “the best, according to NIST.”

For example, when NIST released its first version of the age estimation tests, 5 of the 6 participating vendors scored first in SOME category.

But NIST doesn’t do this just to make the vendors happy. NIST does this because biometrics are used in many, many ways.

Let’s look at recent age estimation testing, which currently tests 15 algorithms rather than the original 6.

Governments and private entities can estimate ages for people at the pub, people buying weed, or people gambling. And then there’s the use case that is getting a lot of attention these days—people accessing social media.

Child Online Safety, Ages 13-16 (in my country anyway)

When NIST conceived the age estimation tests, the social media providers generaly required their users to be 13 years of age or older. For this reason, one of NIST’s age estimation tests focused upon whether age estimation algorithms could reliably identify those who were 13 years old vs. those who were not.

By Adrian Pingstone – Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112727.

Which, by the way, basically means that the NIST age estimation tests are useless in Australia. After NIST started age estimation testing, Australia passed a law last month requiring social media users to be 16 years old or older.

Returning to America, NIST actually conducted several different tests for the 13 year old “child online safety” testing. I’m going to focus on one of them:

Age 8-12 – False Positive Rates (FPR) are proportions of subjects aged 8 to 12 but whose age is estimated from 13 to 16 (below 17).

This covers the case in which a social media provider requires people to be 13 years old or older, someone between 8 and 12 tries to sign up for the social media service anyway…AND SUCCESSFULLY DOES SO.

You want the “false positive rate” to be as low as possible in this case, so that’s what NIST measures.

Results as of December 10, 2024

The image below was taken from the NIST Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) Age Estimation & Verification page on December 10, 2024. Because this is a continuous test, the actual results may be different by the time you read this, so be sure to check the latest results.

From https://pages.nist.gov/frvt/html/frvt_age_estimation.html as of December 10, 2024.

As of December 10, the best performing algorithm of the 15 tested had a false positive rate (FPR) of 0.0467. The second was close at 0.0542, with the third at 0.0828.

The 15th was a distant last at 0.2929.

But the worst-tested algorithm is much better on other tests

But before you conclude that the 15th algorithm in the “8-12” test is a dud, take a look at how that same algorithm performed on some of the OTHER age estimation tests.

For the age 17-22 test (“False Positive Rates (FPR) are proportions of subjects aged 17 to 22 but whose age is estimated from 13 to 16 (below 17)”), this algorithm was the second MOST accurate.
And the algorithm is pretty good at correctly classifying 13-16 year olds.
It also performs well in the “challenge 25” tests (addressing some of the use cases I mentioned above such as alcohol purchases).

I think they’re over 13. By Obscurasky – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7776157.

So it looks like this particular algorithm doesn’t (currently) do well with kids, but it does VERY well with adults.

So before you use the NIST tests as a starting point to determine if an algorithm is good for you, make sure you evaluate the CORRECT test, including the CORRECT data.

What Happens if the Crypto Exchanges Fail?

Some people who aren’t relying on gold to get through a possible banking system failure or other catastrophic event are placing their trust in crypto.

ISectors, April 25, 2023:

“Bitcoin can be sent and received anywhere in the world, as long as there is an internet connection. This could be useful in a scenario where traditional banking systems fail and access to financial services is limited.”

But an internet connection isn’t the only thing you need to trade crypto.

You also need a crypto exchange, or some other way to trade crypto.
And if that crypto exchange is hacked or goes bankrupt, you may lose your crypto…and there’s no FDIC.

A self custodial hardware wallet sounds great…at first. All you have to do is take your hardware wallet and walk up to the dude in camouflage selling canned Spam and holding his own hardware wallet. OK. Now trade it. On your own. With no help from a peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platform or a decentralized exchange. Google Gemini:

“Hardware wallets are primarily security devices, not trading platforms. They don’t have the functionality to directly swap one cryptocurrency for another….Directly exchanging crypto would require complex cryptographic operations and blockchain interactions, which are not typically handled by hardware wallets.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how to interact with the blockchain all by myself without help. And very few people do. And even those who know this stuff are mostly helpless if the internet is non-operational.

So if the banks fail and/or some other catastrophe takes place, don’t count on crypto to survive.

Frankly we do better when there’s NOT a catastrophic event, protections guard us from fraud, and the bad effects of a fake identity are minimized.

(Post-apocalyptic image from Google Gemini)

Bredemarket Health Page Updates

Most of you who developed a sudden interest in healthcare this week WON’T be interested in this, so move along.

I’ve added 3 new posts (so far) to the Bredemarket Health page since November 2024:

Dr. Jones MD, NPE
Saving Money When Filling Prescriptions: Not You, The Companies
Medical Fraudsters: Birthday Party People

(And no, I have no real interest in addressing the recent murder of a healthcare executive. It’s a crime. End of discussion.)

I approach health and health product marketing from both an identity and technology perspective, recognizing the similarities and differences between biometrics and biometrics, and between PHI and PII.

Health

Know Your Recruiter “Kristen”

(4/14/2025 Fixed a typo. It’s KORN Ferry, not KORAN Ferry.)

Maybe it’s me, but I’m wondering if Kristen really works for SourceOwls. I know she has 980 followers and all, but yet…

I’d post the link to Kristen’s profile, but it would probably be gone by the time you read this.

Anyway, she sent me an InMail, and I responded.

I got my answer.

Seriously, LinkedIn is filled with people who falsely claim that they work for SourceOwls, Korn Ferry, Kelly…even Amazon. And a verified profile doesn’t offer protection, because a verified profile only confirms identity—not employment.

Know your recruiter.

Medical Fraudsters: Birthday Party People

I’ve talked about Protected Health Information (PHI) before. Sadly, the health information is not not protected that well, since fraudsters can acquire PHI very easily in some cases.

Sometimes REALLY easily.

For example, I could call a medical provider or go to a pharmacy and say that my name is Donald John Trump.

Do you know how many medical practitioners verify identities?

By asking for the person’s birthdate.

So there is the possibility that a medical practitioner, after I say that I am Donald John Trump, will simply ask for my birthday without a second thought.

I would reply “June 14, 1946.”

And some of these medical practitioners would immediately grant access!

Of course, the number of successful fraudulent accesses goes up substantially when the real person is NOT well known.

Yet birthdates are considered an acceptable form of security in some parts of the medical world.

Scary.

#honeypot1129

(The original honeypot can be found in a post on my LinkedIn profile.)

As previously promised…

I’ve spent over 10 years in identity and biometrics, and other factors, including one-to-many identification, one-to-one verification, and classification (e.g. how old you are).

But as I have noted in a recent article in the Bredemarket newsletter The Wildebeest Speaks, verifying someone’s identity only goes so far.

(For people reading this on LinkedIn: here comes #honeypot1129, for those paying attention.)

For example, how many LinkedIn users sporting a green banner and an #opentowork hashtag have been approached by a person claiming to be from Company X…who is NOT from Company X?

That, my friends, is #employmentfraud – something that the REAL employees at all the Company X’s out there take very seriously.

Of course, no #fraudster who is doing something like that would be foolish enough to send me a LinkedIn InMail with such a claim…would they?

Or comment on this post and make such a claim?

You’d be surprised…

#fraud

#identity

#knowyourrecruiter

(Pre-Disney image of Winnie the Pooh and his hunny pot from the https://platinumprophouse.com/products/classic-winnie-the-pooh-standee URL)

River Rising

I thought I knew the difference between persons and non-person entities (NPEs), and then the Innu Nation does this:

With its thunderous rapids carving through a wild boreal forest in Quebec’s Côte-Nord region, the Magpie River is well known to white water rafters from around the globe. What these travelers may not know is that the Magpie recently became the first river in Canada to be granted legal personhood.

Insecurity, For Reel

Insecurity

I didn’t write this. Google Gemini wrote this. (And created the image.)

“In essence, identity is the foundation upon which security is built. A strong, well-managed identity infrastructure is essential for protecting digital assets and preventing unauthorized access. By understanding the overlaps between identity and security, organizations can implement robust security measures that safeguard both their digital assets and the privacy of their users.”

So now take a moment and think about security WITHOUT identity.

And shudder.

Will Entities Adopt the SITA-IDEMIA-Indico “Digital Travel Ecosystem”?

Thinking about “de plane” used in the Fantasy Island television series (image CC BY-SA 3.0) makes me think about travel. Mr. Roarke’s and Tattoo’s guests didn’t have to worry about identifying themselves to disembark from the plane and enter the island. But WE certainly do…and different countries and entities need to adopt standards to facilitate this.

I’ve previously observed that standards often don’t emerge, like Athena, from ivory towers. They emerge when a very powerful entity or person (for example, Microsoft or Taylor Swift) says that THIS is the standard, and waits for the world to comply.

Of course, there can be issues when MULTIPLE powerful entities or people try to champion competing standards.

But what if powerful entities band together?

SITA, the global leader in air transport technology, and IDEMIA Public Security, a world leader in digital technologies, biometrics, and security have announced a collaboration to advance interoperability, trust, and data security through a globally recognized Digital Travel Ecosystem.

Add Indico to the partnership, and perhaps the parties may be on to something.

The goal is to create “an open, secure, and interoperable framework that ensures a travelers’ digital identity is trusted globally, without the need for direct integrations between issuers and verifiers.” It is intentionally decentralized, giving the traveler control over their identity.

Perhaps it’s a fantasy to think that others will buy in. Will they?

Or will they instead select Taylor’s version?