Verifying Identity

Michael T. Smith

How can you tell if a user is who they say they are? How can you tell if they are a real person or a bot? Can you do it without having the user reveal their inforamtion to you. An individual has the right to privacy, but what if they abuse that right to commit fraud? In this project (in collaboration with a start up company) we will consider how machine learning can be used to balance the need of the individual for privacy agains the need of society to be able to validate identity. Our aim is to build distributed user indenity validation systems that do not require the user to reveal personal information. We will do this by designing intelligent, machine learning based, agents that validate a user’s information locally on the telephone. The project may involve collaboration with a London based start up company operating in this area.

This project will suit students with strong analytical skills, there will be a focus on linear algebra and probabilistic inference in the software.