The IRS will use a third party facial recognition company to verify online taxpayers | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The Internal Revenue Service will require people who access and pay their taxes online to enroll in a third-party facial recognition company starting this summer (h/t Krebs on Security). Even those who have already registered on IRS.gov with a username and password will have to provide a government ID, a copy of a utility bill, and a selfie to ID.me, the Virginia-based identity verification company. You’ll take a video selfie with whatever webcam or mobile device you’re using to sign up, which seems likely to cause problems for people with older hardware or who don’t have access to one.
According to the IRS, ID.me is a “trusted technology provider” of identity verification services. Anyone who already has an ID.me account from another…
