Online Identity Study

72% of consumers worry daily about being fooled by a deepfake, and they want their government to do more to regulate AI.

Three-quarters of consumers worry daily about being fooled by a deepfake into handing over sensitive information or money.

Consumers who worry about deepfakes on a daily basis:

A significant majority of consumers call for more governmental regulation of AI to address the issues around deepfakes and generative AI. However, regulatory trust varies globally.

I think my government’s laws around AI don’t go far enough:

I have faith in my government’s ability to regulate AI:

Consumers continue to overestimate their own ability to spot deepfakes.

Even with high anxiety around this increasingly prevalent and ever-evolving technology, consumers continue to overestimate their own ability to spot deepfakes — 60% believe they could detect a deepfake, up from 52% in 2023.

Consumers confident in their ability to spot a deepfake:

Men were more confident in their ability to spot a deepfake (66% men versus 55% women).

Stronger identity verification is needed to protect against costly and prevalent identity theft and fraud.

Fraud is an all-too-familiar issue for many consumers across the globe, with 68%* of respondents reporting that they know or suspect that they’ve been a victim of online fraud or identity theft, or that they know someone who has been affected.

• One-third (32%*) of consumers who were or suspected they were a victim of online fraud said it caused significant problems and several hours of administrative work to resolve, and 14%* went as far as calling it a traumatic experience.
• More than 70% of consumers said they’d spend more time on identity verification if those measures improved security in industries including financial services (77%), healthcare (74%), government (72%), retail and ecommerce (72%), social media (71%), the sharing economy (71%), and travel and hospitality (71%).
• When creating a new online account, global consumers said taking a picture of their ID and a live selfie would be the most accurate form of identity verification (21%*), with creating a secure password coming in at a close second (19%*).

Regardless of whether they’ve been a victim of fraud or identity theft, most consumers worry daily about falling victim to data breaches and account takeover attacks.

Consumers who worry daily about online data breaches:

Consumers who worry daily about their account being taken over by a hacker:

*All data points presented on this page reflect net figures unless indicated with an asterisk (*).