Updated 10-8-14: Properly identifying signers is one of the most important tasks Notaries carry out, but that task may be harder than you think. Recent research by a pair of university psychology professors shows that people often fail to spot imposters — as much as 45 percent of the time — when comparing faces to ID photos.
The results of the NNA’s ID-matching quiz bear this out. Notaries who took the quiz failed to discern imposters from genuine signers nearly one-third of the time.
The quiz presented 18 pairs of photos. One photo was of an actual driver’s license and the other was a candid shot either of the person in the ID or an imposter. Quiz takers were asked to decide who was an imposter and who wasn’t. Half of the photo pairs were of imposters.
More than 2,900 members of the NNA’s Notary community took the quiz, and about 32 percent of the time they failed to catch the imposter. Equally, they said the photos of people who matched their IDs were imposters 31 percent of the time.
“It’s incredibly difficult to match a face to a photo ID,” said Megan Papesh, an assistant professor of psychology at Louisiana State University, who provided the photos used on the ID-matching quiz.
One reason is that people often change their appearance, even over relatively short periods of time, Papesh said.
In a recent LinkedIn post, New Jersey Notary Michael Harris recalled meeting a middle-aged woman at a loan signing who looked very different than the woman in the ID photo. “She showed me a series of photos on her refrigerator that documented her year-long weight loss of 100+ pounds,” Harris wrote. “By examining the progression of the photos, I was convinced that she was who she claimed to be.”
Failing to catch imposters
Papesh and her research partner, Stephen Goldinger, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, earlier this year published the results of a study that examined how difficult it was to match faces to ID photos.
Papesh and Goldinger showed their test subjects — all university students — more than 200 pairs of photographs of strangers. One photo was of a student’s ID that was taken anywhere from a few months to seven years earlier. The second photo was a candid, recent shot either of the person in the student ID or an imposter.
The ID-matching challenge
Test subjects who were shown a high percentage of mismatched photos missed the fakes 20 percent of the time. Subjects who saw a low number of mismatched pairs failed to catch about 45 percent of the imposters.
The NNA’s quiz corresponded to the group of Papesh’s test subjects who were shown a high percentage of fakes. And the Notaries got it wrong nearly one third of the time, much worse than the student test subjects.
“That’s really surprising,” Papesh said of the NNA quiz results. “It shows a lot of work needs to be done” to improve how we match faces to IDs.
In a world where many states auto-renew drivers licenses, and a signer’s ID photo could be a decade or more old, it can be very hard to tell if an ID and specific signer go together. Have they gained weight, changed their hair, had plastic surgery or just aged?
Papesh also noted that cross-cultural differences complicate matters. People have a much harder time accurately identifying people from another culture or race.
As imperfect as matching faces to ID photos is, Papesh said, there isn’t a better way to identify people at present because reliable facial recognition technology is not available.
She offered some suggestions to minimize the risk of missing an imposter.
Features like hair and weight can change, so Papesh recommended focusing on features that don’t change much, such as the size and shape of a person’s ears, nose, mouth and eyes.
ID-vetting protocol
Bill Anderson, Vice President of Legislative Affairs for the NNA, recommended an identity-vetting protocol for Notaries incorporating three best practices.
- Look for suspicious circumstances: Is the signer trying to rush you or distract you from your normal procedures? Is the signer explaining why their signatures might not match or why they don’t look like their ID photo? “A little common sense goes a long way,” Anderson said.
- Examine the ID: Look at the ID closely and check the various security features, such as the ghost images, microprinting and raised lettering. Have an ID guide handy for out-of-state IDs.
- Match the ID to the signer: Instead of looking at hair, weight and other changeable features, focus on features that don’t change as much, such as the shape and position of ears, the nose, the mouth and the eyes.
Papesh added one final thought to the protocols: Take your time.
“Most of the time when people make a really critical error in checking someone’s ID, it’s because they inconvenience the person whose ID they are checking,” she said. “They let something go. So it’s important to take more time.”
For more information on this subject, see the October issue of the NNA’s member magazine, The National Notary.