Yoti publishes demographic data for Age Scan accuracy and touts biometric phishing protection partnership

Yoti Age Scan has an average mean absolute error (MAE) rate of below one and a half for sixteen and seventeen year-old women and men, according to data published to LinkedIn by Yoti CEO and Co-founder Robin Tombs.

The data breaks down MAE rates by age, gender, and skin tone according to the Fitzpatrick Scale. The data is based on the company’s July 2020 algorithm, according to Tombs, and is contrasted with that from its February 2020 algorithm. The highest error rates are found for women with darker skin. General improvement is observable, and Tombs points out the importance of improving accuracy for the 16 to 17 and 18 to 24 age groups, as young adults are asked relatively often to prove their age.

Average MAE for people above 50 remains above four years, so there may be some work to do if Yoti Age Scan is to be repurposed for seniors’ discounts.

“We share our anonymised findings openly to ensure #academics & #equality campaigners can see the unintended skin tone & gender #bias in our algorithm & that this bias is declining as the training data set gets more diverse,” Tombs writes.

“We are breaking new ground here scientifically, in a very open way, & we believe & hope, but cannot yet prove, that over the next year or two, today’s low bias for 16-17 & 18-24s will be low across all ages.”

Yoti is also touting its partnership with Galaxkey, which combines biometrics with high-level of encryption to enable email recipients to verify the sender and protect their data from phishing. Galaxkey is currently offering a 14-day trial of the service.

Customers of the combined solution can carry out eKYC checks to significantly boost email security, according to the announcement, and Yoti says the technology could eliminate phishing emails if widely enough implemented. Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations report shows that phishing was a part of 32 percent of all cyberattacks, Yoti notes.

Users scan a QR code in the Yoti app to authenticate themselves for access Galaxkey’s collaboration platform. When they send an email, it is stamped by Yoti for verification before being relayed to the recipient.

Article Topics

age verification  |  authentication  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  encryption  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  Yoti