Persona sees ‘fraud slop’ pale next to simple presentation attacks in 2026 H1 report 

Persona has found simple presentation attacks to be the dominant form of selfie fraud.

The identity company’s first-half 2026 report on selfie fraud analyzed just over 27 million fraudulent selfies to break down the different ways fraudsters are attacking selfie verification flows.

Persona says the most pervasive attempt comes in the form of relatively simple presentation attacks. When injection attacks rose in complexity, bad actors were more likely to inject videos of real people than AI-generated selfies.

“We tend to see high-quality AI selfies and injection attacks when fraudsters have high-value targets,” says Coco Tang, a product architect at Persona. “But there are also fraud rings that use bots or AI to launch hundreds of thousands of attacks.”

“Frankly, it’s fraud slop.”

GenAI content was found in 23.5 percent of fraudulent selfie attacks, with 20 percent in presentation attacks, and 3.5 percent in injection attacks. While the latter is a low percentage, that still meant 952,000 cases.

The vast majority of attempts remain relatively simple presentation attacks, accounting for 86.2 percent of selfie fraud attempts. These attacks can be quite simple with the attacker wearing a mask, holding up a piece of paper, or using a video recording from another screen. This unsophisticated form constituted 66.2 percent.

Injection attacks use software or hardware to replace or bypass a camera stream. This was found in 10.3 percent — 2.8 million cases — of the more than 27 million fraudulent selfie attempts.

Attackers are 194 percent more likely to inject videos of real people, according to Persona’s report. “Many of these videos come from people who are tricked into sharing a selfie, or get paid but don’t fully understand what’s happening,” Tang says.

Persona has shared reports of fraud marketplaces where full packages of identifying information, documents and video selfies are sold for as little as $12.

Persona recommends visual models that check for AI-generated content and presentation attacks, device intelligence, behavioral signals to spot bot and abnormal activity, and population-level analysis to tackle these threats.

The Persona 2026 H1 selfie fraud report can be downloaded in full here.

Persona puts itself forward for France, Germany EUDI Wallet implementation

Europe’s shift to EUDI Wallets is shifting to a faster gear, and Persona is putting itself forward as an early technical enabler for businesses that must comply with the upcoming identity verification mandates.

Under eIDAS 2.0, all EU member states must issue EUDI Wallets by the end of 2026. By the end of 2027 banks, fintechs, telecoms, large online platforms, healthcare providers, transport operators, utilities and other regulated sectors must accept EUDI Wallets or face penalties under both eIDAS 2.0 and the Anti‑Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR). These wallets will become a primary mechanism for high‑assurance identity verification across the EU.

Persona is already supporting the transition. The company verifies France Identité and Germany’s emerging EUDI Wallet credentials in early access and is actively participating in both countries’ sandbox environments.

France and Germany are the furthest along in wallet development, and Persona’s coverage spans both. France Identité uses the NFC chip in the national ID card and is undergoing ARF interoperability testing.

Germany, through innovation agency SPRIND, is building its national wallet and has opened a sandbox for relying parties. Personalausweis is Germany’s national ID card, which contains an embedded eID chip, while online authentication comes via the AusweisApp.

Persona’s verification infrastructure handles the technical differences between the two systems, allowing businesses to integrate once rather than build separate country‑specific implementations.

As more EU states open their sandboxes — with Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and Sweden among them — Persona is tracking each rollout and preparing additional integrations. Its platform already supports other European eIDs such as ItsMe, MitID and iDIN, giving regulated businesses a unified approach to digital identity across the region. Persona believes its early access to France and Germany’s wallets offers a practical path to testing, integration and compliance readiness as the EU’s digital identity framework becomes operational.

Article Topics

AI fraud  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometric verification  |  EU Digital Identity Wallet  |  Persona  |  presentation attack detection  |  selfie biometrics