Tutorial: Understand Database Verification results

Overview

A Database Verification checks whether information about a user matches a record in a known database.

This tutorial walks through an example Database Verification result. You'll learn how to interpret which Verification checks passed or failed, and why.

Background

Before you do this tutorial, it will be helpful to know some basics about Database Verification:

• Database Verification overview: Understand what a Database Verification does.
• Database Verification settings: Get a quick overview of three things we'll see in the examples below: fields, Verification checks, and match requirements.

If you don't know how to find Inquiry results in the Persona Dashboard, check out Inquiry details in the Dashboard.

Example Database Verification result — United States

First, let's look at a Database Verification that covers the United States. We'll walk through this example:

Standard parts

Much of what you see here is like what you'd see for any type of Verification. The standard parts of the results tell you about the Verification attempts and checks.

Attempts: In this Inquiry, the end user made two Verification attempts. Both attempts were for Database Verification, and both attempts failed. In the screenshot, you see the expanded details of one attempt.

Checks: In the expanded attempt, we see that two Verification checks—P.O. Box Detection and Alive Detection—were required (Required = Yes). Both required checks passed, as indicated by the green check marks.

Overall result

But overall, this Database Verification attempt failed. Why? 

The reason is that the Identity Comparison Check was also required, and this check did not pass. This check passes only if each "required" field collected in the Database Verification matches fields in a known database.

The details of this check appear in a special section. Let's take a look.

Identity Comparison Check Results

Let's zoom in on the Identity Comparison Check Results.

Here's what each column means:

• Property: The type of information about the user—also known as the field.
• Submitted: The information the end user submitted.
• Required: Whether this field has to match, in order for the Identity Comparison Check to pass.
• Match Result: How closely the submitted information matched a known database record. The options are: Full, Partial, None, or Missing. Below, we'll explain what each option means.

Fields that matched

Some fields have a green check mark next to them. This means they matched—i.e. the value the user submitted sufficiently matched what was in a known database.

In the Match Result column, we see these fields varied in how closely they matched a known database record:

• Match result = Full: First Name, Last Name, and Country Code all were a Full match. This means the value the user submitted matched exactly what was in a known database.
• Match result = Partial: Street House Number was a Partial match. This means the submitted value was close to the value in a known database, but not exactly the same.

Fields that did not match

Some fields have a red X next to them. This means they did not match—i.e. the value the user submitted did NOT sufficiently match what was in a known database.

In general, a failure can happen for two reasons:

• Match Result = None: The information the user submitted did not sufficiently match what is in a known database.
  • In this example, this is the reason for all the failed fields.
• Match Result = Missing: Persona was unable to find information about this field from a known database.

Behind a match result: match requirements

You might have wondered:

• What exactly is the threshold for a Full, Partial, or None match?
• Why do some of these fields pass when there is only a Partial match?
• Can I configure these things?

Yes. You can configure a set of rules called match requirements, which answer all of these questions. We won't cover match requirements in this tutorial, but you can learn more here: Match requirements for Database Verification. In short, Persona provides strong default match requirements for each field, which you can further adjust if you want.