The illogical proof of address system: is it really required by law?

RustyShackleford

jamie_02 wrote: »

I too have a new Monzo current account (not pre-pay, but a full service current account, I was one of the first 100) and this will shortly offer an overdraft. They have identified me by my passport and video. Starling do this too, which leads me to think the 'utility bill' method is neither compulsory nor a particularly 'digital age' way of verification. As has been highlighted above, the regulations do not specify how verification should be completed, and I suspect most financial providers are stuck in the past.

In the past 6 months i've opened Paypal Credit, a new Credit Card, Current/Savings accounts with "B", and an ISA with Nutmeg all entirely online with no additional ID or proof of address required. Traditional financial providers are actually pretty easy to access.

It's these new "Challenger" banks that cause problems for me, with their requirements for photo ID. I don't drive, so have never had a licence. I haven't been abroad in decades, so have no valid passport. And i'm not alone. When the Conservatives touted their plans for voter [strike]suppression[/strike] ID it emerged that 7.5% of the electorate (3.5 Million people) don't possess a driving licence or passport.

Challenger banks insistence on photo ID is in danger of creating a new digital divide where the poor are stuck using legacy banks with their more expensive products and higher fees.

I've got my fingers crossed for Monzo. When i signed up for their prepaid card i wasn't required to submit photo ID. My status is even showing as "Enhanced identity verification", so i'm hopeful that'll carry over to the current account. Considering other challenger banks policies it's a very faint hope though.

ThemeOne

I find nearly all security processes a nightmare, and have never met anyone who's reassured by them, because it seems to be common knowledge that they merely make life awkward for the honest, while allowing determined fraudsters to easily get round the system.

It's not helped by the requirements changing over time and, as has been pointed out earlier in the thread, the exact hoops you have to jump through vary with the institution and sometimes I've found even with the person you deal with in the institution.

Solicitors are equally awkward if you're a new client (for conveyancing anyway) but it can be worth being firm - one solicitor I signed up with was adamant I would have to bring all the various ID documents to their office (over 100 miles away) in person. I told them I would go elsewhere if that was their policy and they relented.

I've learned the hard way - and to be fair it's common advice - to keep at least one bill on paper rather than online, despite all the encouragements to do everything online.

SouthLondonUser

Surely requiring photo ids is a safer and harder to defraud system?

If anything, what you have just said proves my point that the continental European system of cheap ID cards and a population register makes sense. Like I said, I have always wondered how you can prove identity and citizenship without a driving licence or a passport, neither of which are compulsory.

Oh, BTW, it's not only challenger banks that require photo ids.

Uxb

You are missing the point
The address ID part is to fix you or tie your personal ID to a place.

That means
1. The bank etc can sent it statutory notices to that address.
2. Court actions can be started against you if necessary
3. Bailiffs can be sent to re-possess your property if order to.

Mere photo ID and email only ID means you cannot be "got hold of" if the bank or credit card company or whoever really wants to as you are not fixed to a location, they have no where to serve court papers to etc.

There is no legal requirement as such to verify this and that merely a requirement to ID your customer by methods they choose to the standard that they feel is appropriate to the risk level.
Remember also that the banks particularly HSBC due to past misdemeanors are terrified of the USA. If they get caught out again they will be excluded form the USA dollar market by the USA authorities and in effect that could mean bankrupty for them.

On Addresses, why do you think governments round the world like taxing property and land so much? Its because unlike people land cannot vanish and go abroad outside their control/jurisdiction.

Cheap ID card would be forged even worse.
If you want a proper ID system you make it like a bank chip and pin card linked to an on-line always active database run by HMG. but then you have problems over who is given access to verify the supplied info with the database landlords? and employers? all of whom would need a PDQ type card reader to access the database.....
You can see why ID cards are not popular in the UK added to which in the proposals HMG was going to charge for them the same amount as for a passport.

Estonia run a good national ID system but then again they are so extreme about population "control" that the EU's Estonian digitial commissioner wanted all of us to log into and post onto internet sites under our real names verified by our government issued ID card. I imagine any non approved comments and anti-government comment would becomes an arrestable offense.

Uxb

RustyShackleford wrote: »

When the Conservatives touted their plans for voter [strike]suppression[/strike] ID it emerged that 7.5% of the electorate (3.5 Million people) don't possess a driving licence or passport.

You might just possibly have forgotten that it was the LABOUR party who put though the 2006 ID cards act to enforce compulsory ID registration for all and it was the Conservative/liberal coalition that repealed it in 2010.

JuicyJesus

Uxb wrote: »

You might just possibly have forgotten that it was the LABOUR party who put though the 2006 ID cards act to enforce compulsory ID registration for all and it was the Conservative/liberal coalition that repealed it in 2010.

The Tories had the idea of having to present ID to vote in their manifesto this year.

RustyShackleford

Uxb wrote: »

You might just possibly have forgotten that it was the LABOUR party who put though the 2006 ID cards act to enforce compulsory ID registration for all and it was the Conservative/liberal coalition that repealed it in 2010.

It's not the idea of voter identity verification i object to, merely the form. Driving licences and passports cost money so are more likely to be obtained by people wanting to drive and travel abroad than those that don't wish or are unable to afford to. Requiring a passport or driving licence is effectively putting the people's right to vote behind a paywall. If the government wants to require photo ID in order to vote then that photo ID (whether that be ID card or passport) must be available to everyone without a charge.

With innovative services and low/no fees challenger banks have great potential to help the poor and most vulnerable people manage their money but, by only allowing driving licence or passport for ID, many of the people who could most benefit are locked out and will continue to be stung with high fees by legacy banks.

benjus

I think the biggest change that would come from compulsory ID cards being introduced is that you would have a way to uniquely identify every individual legally resident in this country. This is something that simply doesn't exist at the moment - there is no combination of data that every person will definitely have that guarantees to uniquely identify them without any risk of confusing them with someone else.

This has a number of practical advantages, such as making electoral fraud much harder, but seems to be unpalatable to the British way of thinking. I can't see any government introducing this any time soon.

Voluntary ID cards might be useful for cases like the one in this thread, but would they really be any better than photocard driving licences? If a lender claims that you may not have updated the address on your licence, won't they just claim the same thing about your ID card?

SouthLondonUser

Uxb wrote: »

You are missing the point
The address ID part is to fix you or tie your personal ID to a place.

No, I do not think I am.

Every single time I have moved to a property over the last 10 years, I kept receiving lots and lots of email, first from lenders (I often recognised the address of the senders), then from bailiffs, with threatening text on the outside of the envelopes. I never opened them, of course, but I can only suppose it was lenders chasing unpaid debt. The fact that the previous occupier of the property provided proofs of address surely helped the lenders massively when said occupier decided to stop paying, pack and move elsewhere, right??

Of course I understand that, in the absence of a population register like in most of [STRIKE]the civilised world[/STRIKE] continental Europe, lenders may want to resort to proofs of address to, well, verify the address. What drives me nuts is the lack of consistency: every single institution seems to have wildly different and incompatible rules on what constitutes a valid proof of address. Reading some of the replies on this thread it seems I am the only one who has ever experienced any difficulty: every one else can easily make a quick phone call during work hours to whatever insitution they need (council, utility company, etc.), which is always all to happy to oblige, and to promptly provide whatever printed documentation is needed, after a very short wait on the phone. If that’s what you experience, lucky you, but don’t think it is representative! Other parts of this forum, or immigration forums, are full of horror stories about the nightmares witnessed not just by foreigners, but even by Britons who have recently come back to the country. Years ago BT refused to give me a landline because they dared say that the HSBC letter I had sent them to prove my address seemed forged, that they considered me a risky customer, and therefore they demanded an extortionate £300 deposit. I should have filed a formal complaint, but I didn’t have the energy nor the time, as I needed the landline, so I accepted their extortion (of course the HSBC letter was genuine, btw).

Many banks are reluctant to deal with US customers, but what on earth does this have to do with proofs of address? A proof of address does not show in any way if someone is a US citizen, a green card holder, or is a US taxpayer.

The point about bailiffs repossessing a property is utterly irrelevant in the case of a non-home owner who is not securing a debt against a property. So is your point about governments taxing property. Arcane proof of address requirements often apply to situations which have nothing whatsoever to do with securing a debt against a property.

Why do you say cheap ID cards would be forged even worse? Do you have any evidence to back this up? Is continental Europe plagued by a fraud epidemic, compared to the UK, because they have ID cards and don't use proofs of address? Not AFAIK but, by all means, if you know differently please do elaborate.

I asked before and I ask again: what more surveillance would ID cards subject us to? British citizens are already subject to way more surveillance than their ID card-bearing cousins in continental Europe (from the powers of police and intelligence agencies, to the amount of data collected and shared by credit bureaus). The only difference is that the lack of ID cards can give the illusion of less surveillance.

Finally, as much as I am in favour of a population register and of ID cards, I am wholeheartedly against requiring ID to vote in the absence of a cheap and universally required ID document 9as is the case in the UK and the US), because this would effectively prevent the poorer parts of the population, those who are more likely not to have a passport nor a driving licence, from voting. Which is, after all, the real intention of these initiatives: it’s not a coincidence, after all, that it’s Republicans and Tories who proposed these things!

SouthLondonUser

benjus wrote: »

I think the biggest change that would come from compulsory ID cards being introduced is that you would have a way to uniquely identify every individual legally resident in this country.

A lot depends on how the system is implemented.

Paradoxically, in the US there are no ID cards, but there is a social security number, which uniquely identifies every individual, and which people guard with their life precisely because having access to it can make fraud and identity theft all too easy.
AFAIK there is no single number or code, in the Western European countries (I am not familiar with Eastern Europe) which use ID cards, which is as comparable to the American social security.

Also, I have never lived in Germany but German acquaintances tell me Germany does not have a centralised mega-database of all ID cards (if anyone knows more, I’d be interested). The Italians probably do, but the Italian ID card is a joke (a picture glued with some spit to a piece of paper) and all too easy to fake; I remember signs at Stansted airport warmly recommending Italian citizens to use passports. The Spanish, French, Belgian and Portuguese ID cards I saw seem more reasonable. All of this goes to show there is no silver bullet, it’s all to do with how a specific system is implemented.

Finally, precisely because disenfranchising the worse off has been mentioned, I am strongly convinced that a system of compulsory yet cheap or free ID cards would benefit those who are worse off. Again, in the absence of a population register which keeps track of the fact that Mr John Smith was born on 28/7/2017 and happens to be a British citizen, how does one prove citizenship? For those born after a certain date (1983?) , being born in the country is no longer sufficient, and citizenship depends on the immigration/residency status of the parents. This is why, when our child was born, we immediately applied for a British passport, because we wanted to be sure there was no uncertainty whatsoever on citizenship. The newspapers have reported a number of stories of people who are British citizens, except they are not, because they cannot prove the residency status of their parents when the were born. There was also the story of a lady, born here from parents from the Caribbean, who is the only one in her family who is not a British citizen, because she was born right after the law changed. Only she had no idea she was not a citizen and has only just learn it. She has lived her all life thinking she was, and she had never been challenged until now. She was on benefits, with a disabled child, but her benefits have been stopped.