By providing such information you are given
the hiring organisation or financial institution
permission to view and ‘hold onto’ such
information about you. Additionally, and
given the growing phenomenon of fake
documents and identity fraud, many hiring
organisations and financial institutions are
taking this a step further, as capturing and
storing biometrics as proof of identification
is becoming increasingly commonplace,
especially in the digital age we live in today.
For this, the hiring organisation or financial
intuition will ask you to share some form
of biometric – a digital scan of your
fingerprint is most commonly used – and
will then request your permission to use your
biometric to conduct a background check on
you. The purpose of the background check
is foremost to confirm your identity, but
it may also include if you have a previous
conviction, qualification verifications and
your employment and/or credit history.
In most instances this process is merely a
formality where using a biometric produces
results with higher accuracy than relying
solely on an identification number or
document. And, if you’ve been completely
honest on all the information about yourself
that you shared in the application process,
what do you have to hide?
Well, what if you don’t know that, for
example, you have a previous conviction or
www.intelligentcio.com
“
WE RECOMMEND
THAT
INDIVIDUALS
CONDUCT
VARIOUS SELF-
CHECKS ON
THEMSELVES ON
A REGULAR BASIS.
pending case awaiting trial against you? Or
perhaps you are not aware of the fact that
your name and/or identification number has
previously been listed as a bad creditor?
In our experience, and particularly with
previous or pending convictions, many people
are unaware that they have a conviction or
case awaiting trial against them. This could
be for any number of reasons, for example;
unpaid fines for traffic offences that have
been escalated, to something a person may
have done when they were younger for which
at the time they signed an ‘admission of
guilt’ and paid a fine, not realising this would
reflect on their record.
In either instance mentioned here the
person may be unaware because they have
not yet, or at all, received written feedback or
documentation pertaining to the confirmed
or pending conviction. Similarly, a person’s
details may have been entered onto a
‘bad creditor’ database, or their accounts
handed over for legal collection of which
they may not be aware due to a gap in
communications, for example.
To remedy this, we recommend that
individuals conduct various self-checks on
themselves on a regular basis – to ensure that
the information available about them is correct
and up-to-date at all times. This ensures that
the hiring organisation or financial institution
which an individual may be applying to, can
rest assured that they know who they are
dealing with – and in turn the individual knows
themselves and what information they are
sharing in a technological driven information
sharing society.
Global biometric trends
Globally, Digital Transformation and
consumer acceptance of biometrics as a
measure to increase security protocols are
both having a significant impact on driving
the rapid adoption of biometrics. However,
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