Increased need for accurate mobile identity

By: Sandeep Ganguly, CEO, U2opia Mobile

Mobile phones have evolved a lot over the years with the advancement of technology. From being a luxury, they have now slowly become a necessity for many people around the world. And with the rising need for people to have unique identity in the digitally connected world, mobile phones are likely to be your unique ID, that prove your identity. As mobile numbers are something which you would not wish to change frequently, they can easily serve as your unique identifier.

Your mobile phones are something which you are likely to carry along with you wherever you go. So, there is hardly a chance of you not able to authenticate your unique mobile number. This is not the case with physical IDs like id cards, photo proof, etc., which need to be specifically carried along everywhere. Also, such identity proofs can be easily misplaced, unlike mobile phones. Thus, you get a sense of surety with mobile identity.

The person who owns the mobile phone and who can easily unlock the phone using a secure password or finger-lock pattern, can quickly authenticate the mobile identity through multi-factor authentication process. The first step of such an authentication process is generally a password, and the second step involves sharing of verification code via SMS delivered to your registered phone number.

Such double-layered authentication process is being used by different popular mobile apps like Whatsapp, Twitter, Uber, Telegram, etc, for users logging into them. It helps to quickly verify the identity of the user and to make sure that no one else is using the phone. Thus, the privacy of the user is protected to a great extent.

Even the methods used for secure online payment by various mobile apps indicates a paradigm shift towards mobile identity and privacy. To make an online transaction, you now have to go through a series of verification steps undertaken by the app, the payment gateway as well as the credit card company. This proves as a safety belt against fraudulent transactions as well as helps you to make sure that only you (the mobile phone owner) is carrying out the verification / authentication steps.

With a lot of focus on mobile security for most of the newly developed consumer and enterprise apps, mobile identity authentication and verification plays a major role in the digital world. And this demand keeps increasing with every passing day, to safeguard against fraudulent activities, mobile thefts and so on, thereby, ensuring accurate mobile identity authentication under most circumstances. So, have you utilized the power of accurate mobile identity yet?