Document report: suggested client actions

Introduction

The Document report employs a variety of techniques designed to identify fraudulent documents. We can support this with expert manual processing to ensure a check is subject to a thorough analysis.

This guide is for clients who use the Document report in their service. We look at specific scenarios, examine individual results from the report breakdown, and describe some common suggested actions.

We recommend that you familiarise yourself with the breakdowns of the Document report before reading this guide. You can read our API v3 documentation about the Document report. If you're using API v2, you can read our v2 reference documentation instead.

You can also see our page detailing the Document report response object.

The sub-result

The sub_result field indicates a specific detailed result, and is only applicable to Document reports.

Possible values of sub_result are as follows:

rejected: We can't process the document image, or the document isn't supported by Onfido for processing. Alternatively, the age of the applicant may be too low (the standard threshold is 16 years old but you can write to your Onfido contact to have this changed).
suspected: Document shows signs of suspect fraud.
caution:: We can't successfully complete all verifications, but this doesn’t necessarily point to a suspected document (for example, expired document).
clear: All underlying verifications pass. There are no indications the document is fraudulent.

Breakdowns and sub-breakdowns in the response object

Individual breakdowns can have the values clear or consider.

Breakdowns are made up of sub-breakdowns. A breakdown will have a consider result when at least one of its sub-breakdowns contains a consider or unidentified result.

You can read how individual breakdowns contribute to the overall sub_result value in the Document report in our API documentation.

You can also review a page that describes the formats that individual fields in the Document report take (for example: arrays of objects, strings).

Example scenarios

The following scenarios are provided as examples, and are based on default configurations. Where breakdowns can be configured to map to alternative sub-results, this is noted. If you wish to discuss such configuration changes, please ask your contact at Onfido or email our Client Support team.

'rejected' sub-result scenarios

Potential contributing breakdown and sub-breakdown(s)	Potential client action(s)
`image_integrity`: `supported_document`	Verify that the document is supported.

You can review the full list of documents Onfido supports.

Potential contributing breakdown and sub-breakdown(s)	Potential client action(s)
`image_integrity`: `image_quality`	Request an additional image of the same document

The most common reason for a document to be deemed “unprocessable”, is the fact that key data points might be obstructed, cropped, or not visible. Such documents are rejected for poor image quality.

Potential contributing breakdown and sub-breakdown(s)	Potential client action(s)
`age_validation`: `minimum_accepted_age`	Block

Asserts whether the age calculated from the document’s date of birth data point is greater than or equal the minimum accepted age set at account level. The standard threshold is 16 years old but you can write to your Onfido contact to have this changed.

'suspected' sub-result scenarios

Potential contributing breakdown and sub-breakdown(s)	Potential client action(s)
`visual_authenticity`: `original_document_present` (can be configured to map to `caution` sub-result)	a. Ignore b. Refer to manual team for review c. Request an additional document

Onfido deploys a number of texture analysis algorithms to detect whether or not an image contains any of the following:

screenshots
pictures of pictures
printouts

Original document scanning presents a difficult challenge that in our experience is best solved via the combination of tech and human expertise. If our algorithms fail to produce a result beyond a certain degree of certainty, documents will be referred to manual analysts to supplement the engine's decision.

Potential contributing breakdown and sub-breakdown(s)	Potential client action(s)
`visual_authenticity`: `picture_face_integrity`	a. Block b. Refer to manual team for review

Onfido deploys a number of algorithms designed to analyse whether the picture in a document image may be a physical insertion or otherwise digitally tampered.