How do they know it's you?

Stephen Withers
Monday, 19 May 2008 12:04

Opinion and Analysis

And after hearing a demonstration of voice verification being used to confirm the identity of a caller, 59 percent said they would be likely to use it. I'd have been prepared to believe an even bigger proportion felt that way.

But here's where things get dodgy: roughly half of the respondents felt that voice verification is more secure than the other authentication methods that can be used over the phone, including home phone number, memorable information, password, PINs and account information. And 61 percent felt voice verification was a secure form of identity verification.

The problem is that the only qualifications needed to participate in the research were that the respondent was aged at least 18 and had contacted customer service in the past 12 months.

How can they know how secure it is? Sure, it sounds secure - but only if it works properly. Again, I'm not casting aspersions on Nuance's product, but about the only reasonable conclusion you can draw from the survey is that an organisation that implements voice verification will probably find a useful proportion of its customers take it up. I doubt any of the respondents have any real idea about the actual level of security provided by voice verification.

Far too much attention is paid to how people "feel" about issues, regardless of how well informed they are. When it comes to security, I'd rather take notice of four people with specialised knowledge that 400 or even 4000 people in the street.

I admit I like the idea of voice verification - it appears to save time as it can be carried out while my call is in the queue, and it does mean less of my personal information needs to be exposed to agents.  But I want assurance from experts that it is reliable and secure: how 400 of my peers feel about that is neither here nor there.