Iowa Workforce Development is now using what’s called the ID.me identity verification system for unemployment claims IWD executive director Beth Townsend says it’s a modern system that adds another level of protection to keep unemployment benefits from being stolen.
“It helps you prove to us that you are who you say you are so that when we pay you, we know the money is going to the person that’s legitimately making the claim,” Townsend says. She says all you have to do is present your information to be checked. “There’s three different ways you can do that. You can do it online through the ID.me app, you can do it through a video chat appointment with an ID.me staff person who looks at your documents online, and then verifies your documentation,” she says. “Or you can bring it into the American Job Center and our UI staff there can take the documents, upload them, and get your identity verified that way.”
Townsend says anytime you are dealing with paying a benefit there are going to be people who try to take advantage of it, and this bolsters their efforts to prevent that fraud.
“We’ve always had a pretty robust security system in place, which we don’t discuss publicly, obviously, because we want to not give anybody a heads up on what we’re doing,” Townsend says. “But we but it is something that we have worked on for a long time, and Id me is used in about 29 other states.”
She says they had good results in their pilot run. “It’s been thoroughly tested. We have seen really good success, 96% of the people who have used it so far have of over 21,000 people have successfully verified their identity. It takes less than five minutes to do it,” she says.
IWD says since January ID.me has also already helped them identify and halt more than 1,200 fraudulent attempts to obtain benefits. The ID.me verification is now required of anyone who files an unemployment claim.