topic Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics? in Credit Cards

Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

crystal626 — Mon, 01 May 2023 21:25:29 GMT

Has anyone else run into this? I applied for the Walgreens card the other day and they made me do a whole process where I had to use my phone to take a selfie video while rotating my head left and right, had to take a picture of the bar code on my license, and then had to call and give them a code. It was all very intrusive honestly and then on top of it all, I was declined, and have to wait for a letter. I was even prequalified before I applied which made it even worse.

I probably won't be applying for anything Synchrony again. I asked the rep about it and they said they are slowly pushing this to all new applications. I have two cards with them already, it doesn't make sense.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

M_Smart007 — Mon, 01 May 2023 21:37:19 GMT

This is all part of SYNCB's way to keep fraud at bay.

I did the same "ID verification" for a Lowe's card approval on 09-15-2021

"Ran the prequal, can back pre-qualified so hit the submit. Got the we'll get back to you

Called in to verify Identity, Sync has a funny way of doing that, video of self (shaking head) and front/back picture of DL.

Called in with password, Lady said "Congerts" your Approved"

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

pizzadude — Mon, 01 May 2023 22:16:35 GMT

Another recent thread where someone reported their account being locked, calling in and being asked to go through the same verification process.

Wondering who outside of Syncrony will be retaining / sharing / selling all this personal information.....

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

Bestman79 — Mon, 01 May 2023 23:17:57 GMT

This isn't that new of a process from Synchrony. February 2022 they requested same selfie video and upload of DL barcode when I applied for their Walgreens card. Sorry about your denial.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

uncredited — Mon, 01 May 2023 23:56:04 GMT

I've seen talk about this from sync for a year or so now. Recently there was a thread about discover doing similar starting this month.

Hopefully it doesn't become more common. If I didn't already have a discover I don't think I'd bother with them or synchrony due to these things, I'm definitely in the camp that it makes me uncomfortable.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

CashOutReFi — Tue, 02 May 2023 00:08:50 GMT

They must have made some sweeping decisions, to try every idea (good and bad) to thwart fraud that they could possibly imagine.

I had $50k of Synchrony lines closed by the lender ($0 balance at the time, but regular usage). The reason given was likely fraudulent activity based on history.

I guess they don't like people PIF, paying balance before statement cuts, while also requesting CLI's.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

Anonymous — Tue, 02 May 2023 00:13:28 GMT

@pizzadude wrote:

Wondering who outside of Syncrony will be retaining / sharing / selling all this personal information.....

What do you mean?? It's all perfectly legal, I paid good money for the info, signed the form that I wouldn't share it much more than is "reasonable" so what's your problem? Oh wait, you didn't know...

Oh, no, never dealt with Syncrony. Don't even know the name.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

crystal626 — Tue, 02 May 2023 05:22:44 GMT

Well... I'm both glad and sad to see that others have dealt with this. I did some more forum exploration and I see people who did all this to get a letter saying their identity couldn't be verified along with no number to contest it. I tried to scan the back of my ID twice and I'm wondering if it's just my Android phone that caused me to be declined.

To be continued, I guess. Past experience with Synchrony tells me it's gonna be two weeks before I can update what happened.

I will say though... If this is the future of credit card underwriting, I'm gonna opt out. The pittance they give us in exchange for this information was acceptable when it was just text in a computer and some hard hits, but if you're gonna demand my biometrics, I want a lot more than 1 or 2% more than I would have gotten with what I already have.

This is definitely going to make me rethink the business I do going forward as, like most middle class people, I do business with customers that are fighting Amazon locally, and the 5% I get from Amazon's Chase relationship play into my purchases.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

DONZI — Tue, 02 May 2023 05:50:58 GMT

I'll refuse anything which requires biometrics as it's first or last word of authentication requirements.

It's not a money, privacy, etc thing to me, it's just not well thought out, nor is it durable data.

..and at the same time it's too durable. Not willing to change my face, finger or voice to change my authentication after it's been hacked.

Like anything, the gates to cash, biometric or otherwise can and will be hacked, leaked and abused. It's not like money is a problem for successful criminals so the cost to steal isn't a significant barrier and will simply ramp up the methods and need for criminals to become more intimate with their marks.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

crystal626 — Tue, 02 May 2023 06:31:37 GMT

The thing that annoys me is that there are so many other indicators that were ignored.

I applied with my full name, at my address, with my cell phone number (which in this process was sent a link at some point - sorry, I don't remember the exact sequence as I was drunk on my anniversary but ... I see on my phone at some point I was sent a code to put into a site... then I went through this whole thing and was sent to give a code to talk to a person on the phone...

Are we really willing to believe that the hundreds of dollars that someone could have gotten Synchrony to approve (because there is nothing stopping a new account from being declined as we have seen many times before) before shutting off my card was worth the hassle for either side? Because trust me. I was drunk. I lit that rep up for what I was put through to be denied and I would be very surprised if your average consumer that just wasted an hour and a half (best estimate I have from when Synchrony texted me that I applied for something to when I called based on my call logs that add another half hour) to be told "I see here that you were declined, wait for the letter. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Wasting my time is not free. 3 minutes on an application? Okay. An hour and a half that involves an existing customer giving you their permission to use their biometrics of their face for whatever you want? Are you kidding me!? I wish I was sober when they asked because I would have checked my three credit bureaus and seen they didn't hard hit and I would have said *f* no... But now they have my biometrics and to make things worse, there is no biometric agreement that I can see... They can do whatever they want with my face that they wish and my Galaxy S23 Ultra... well... if this was one of the few times it didn't blur on the front cam...

It's a crazy unprecedented level of them having my info. You're right, breaches happen all the time. In fact, T-Mobile just had the second breach they've had in 2023 and we are only 5 months in... On top of what, 5 or 6 in the last 10 years? When do we say enough is enough? When do we even have the option to hold them accountable? It does no good to leave if there is no corporate penalty. How do we even enact a government penalty that's sufficient enough on a company that's majority owned by a German company, one of our closest allies?

We will definitely have to rethink our relations with the rest of the world. That's not even political, it's factual. This new world we live in where everyone is involved in everyone else's business, and foreign companies can hold controlling interests in companies that directly affect our security as a world power, is a whole lot of question marks, especially when we have no choice but to deal with superpowers that have never been interested in the sustainability of the world stage before but we are now forced to trust.

Anyway.... I will give up on my intention to get new credit if it means I have to do this crap again. I have already gotten used to making virtual cards with my Citi and Capital One cards... It's getting to the point that maybe I should close the other 27 cards and just use those two...

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

DONZI — Tue, 02 May 2023 08:35:53 GMT

A similar thing happened trying to get access to EQ a year or so ago.

Totally locked up to me on the website so I called. They pulled some question out of data they had from the 1980's, an old street address I had for a 12-15 months.

I would have maybe said yes if I was told the city also, but.. I told them that was not an address I had lived at.

Door slammed shut and no more assistance. If I were able to fetch my own EQ report I could have at least had saved some time with their verification.

Later called EQ again and finally passed their tests and was able to logon and look around.

I can appreciate that it's not enough to give SSN or last 4 of SSN at many places, but it's crazy that last 4 still may open the door to some CSR via phone.. however I do not want the essential key to open the door be a smartphone or biometrics. Both IMO are unsuitable for numerous reasons.

The TL;DR + [OK] button has made garbage T&C the norm I think, and now it's basically agree or go away proposition for a lot of things.

Got off a redeye flight, get to the rental car desk and have to agree to literally streams of legal doc presented on the LCD of the CC terminal -- some 2-3 inch max x and y axis in size.. Sometimes I aggravate them by reading it before moving forward. No printed copy available to read.

Nothing hurts quite like conceding to this sort of thing because of factors other than the legal agreement content.

Frankly I am a privacy and security advocate, and do typically read and question, modify, reject legal agreements as needed when it's presented respectfully. Sadly, the population at large is supposed to be lemmings now after all the conditioning.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

MarkintheHV — Tue, 02 May 2023 09:48:23 GMT

Remember the days when out of nowhere, you would have an unsolicited credit card in your mailbox and all you had to do was accept it? No applications, no hard pulls, just a random surprise.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

CashOutReFi — Tue, 02 May 2023 20:37:26 GMT

Probably a good idea.

I do work for a telephone company who handles the call flows for voice authentication from banks and the like.

It's more headache than you can possibly imagine. The call audio stream is forked where your voice is sent to both the bank and their 3rd party vendor (like PinDrop, etc) who does all the processing.

The voice "print" is verified off-site by the vendor who then sends a "go" or "no go" to the bank, which will let you proceed to your account or speaking to an agent... or not.

But even today, their systems simply rate the % confidence of the voice match and decide a hard yes or no. It must be one in so many million/billion/trillion to pass snuff with their legal teams. Unbelievable.

Also the voice passing through so many hops across the network is subject to packet loss, degradation, etc. so that is a factor, too.

Re: Synchrony now asking for facial biometrics?

xenon3030 — Wed, 03 May 2023 06:07:58 GMT

If I were you, I would drop my application without providing such data. I did it only once for Equifax to be able to place fraud alert on my profile (it was very intense and it took half an hour by phone). Not sure why they were doing this, while EQ has an extremely bad reputation on data protection. Placing fraud alert by EX/TU took only a minute by phone.

If such data leaks, the bad guys might misuse it in various ways (the worst scenario is misusing it by multiple AI tools that are available to public for free). So, such method for identification verification becomes ineffective after some time.