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I have identical twin boys - when signing up for a bank account app and while completing all the associated hoops for ID, the second to do it got the rather dys

I have identical twin boys - when signing up for a bank account app and while completing all the associated hoops for ID, the second to do it got the rather dystopian error message 'an account has already been registered with this face'

glimshe 24d ago
I wonder how it's possible they didn't think about this problem. Considering everyone involved in building this feature, not a single person thought about the possibility of twins or simply people who are very alike? Also, can't people open multiple accounts?
- _joel 24d ago
  Because it probably does the dystopian tracking well enough, they don't care if it's not 100% accurate. Edge cases in the new world have no recourse, citizen.
- crooked-v 24d ago
  It's one of those items way down on the list of "Falsehoods programmers believe...", way below everything on the names list (https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...).
- II2II 24d ago
  Just look at the "falsehoods programmers believe about ..." articles that pop up from time to time. There are plenty of complexities in the real world that people either don't know about, aren't front of mind when they are tackling a larger problem, or simply don't want to deal with in the here and now. Lost knowledge and new problems are part of the reason why programmers are discouraged from rewriting software from scratch and why businesses in general are hesitant to replace legacy systems that still work.
  - globular-toast 24d ago
    That's true, but those lists are interesting because they aren't full of things you should be learning in primary school.
    - II2II 23d ago
      True, but many of those bits would be learned in some primary schools. It simply depends upon whether they are relevant where you live. That's especially true for names, which is culturally dependent. It is also true for the culturally dependent aspects of dates/time, though there are obscure bits that are only relevant to certain disciplines.
- nkrisc 24d ago
  Which is pretty absurd because twins aren’t even that uncommon. I would bet most people on the planet know or are related to twins.
  - hamper653 24d ago
    Every person on the planet is related to twins.
    - nkrisc 24d ago
      What a pointless point to make. I’ll spell it out for you: related within a generation or two. There are no twins in my family that I know of for several generations, for example. Thus I would say I’m not related to any twins because I’m not in any meaningful way, even if there might be twins somewhere in my ancestral history. If you mean that all humans are related, that is true but a completely useless fact in this context.
      - hamper653 24d ago
        Not every word in a conversation needs to be useful.
        anon48293 24d ago
        Apparently not even entire replies, so I’ll join in with one.
        hamper653 24d ago
        Indeed.
        nkrisc 24d ago
        Those are the ones better left unsaid.
        23d ago
- another-dave 24d ago
  I imagine that it probably went like this "what about identical twins?" / "Don't worry about that for now, we'll solve for it before we go live, but it's not in this milestone". Then someone pulls rank and decides the product is "good enough, we can't wait for all bugs to be fixed" and gets it deployed.
  - mr_toad 24d ago
    Issues get closed to make the metrics look good, not because they’re actually fixed.
- dgellow 24d ago
  Based on my experience I assume someone mentioned the risk, others said it’s unlikely and only a small percentage, that we should care about the 99% for now. Then the issues isn’t revisited until someone impacted complains enough. p99 is ok for web stuff, not for systems that impacts people in their life, but I’ve seen too often things being dismissed because they are edge cases (which becomes an actual real issue at the scale of a country of course)
- wat10000 24d ago
  Maybe they didn’t care. Identical twins are a fraction of a percent of the population. Excluding them (really, only half of them) from the customer base wouldn’t hurt noticeably.
cm2187 24d ago
What is strange is that even the best face recognition algorithms have false positive. So surely they must have planned for two unrelated customers resolving to the same embeddings.
ginko 24d ago
Anyone have any idea how this can happen? Surely the boys have different first names, so how can the system mix them up?
- contubernio 24d ago
  One imagines they are far more worried about person X fraudulently claiming to be person Y than they are about occasionally causing problems for identical twins. Obviously the solution is to accompany facial recognition with DNA tests.
netsharc 24d ago
One kid needs a goatie: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fartworks.thetvdb.com%2Fbanners%2Fseries%2F73871%2Fepisodes%2F603a4e58da602.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9cef7f481d83057b58dd396b5c6be279bd8a72442679fc0b1d7f007327de53f3 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

glimshe 24d ago

I wonder how it's possible they didn't think about this problem. Considering everyone involved in building this feature, not a single person thought about the possibility of twins or simply people who are very alike? Also, can't people open multiple accounts?

_joel 24d ago
Because it probably does the dystopian tracking well enough, they don't care if it's not 100% accurate. Edge cases in the new world have no recourse, citizen.
crooked-v 24d ago
It's one of those items way down on the list of "Falsehoods programmers believe...", way below everything on the names list (https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...).
II2II 24d ago
Just look at the "falsehoods programmers believe about ..." articles that pop up from time to time. There are plenty of complexities in the real world that people either don't know about, aren't front of mind when they are tackling a larger problem, or simply don't want to deal with in the here and now. Lost knowledge and new problems are part of the reason why programmers are discouraged from rewriting software from scratch and why businesses in general are hesitant to replace legacy systems that still work.
- globular-toast 24d ago
  That's true, but those lists are interesting because they aren't full of things you should be learning in primary school.
  - II2II 23d ago
    True, but many of those bits would be learned in some primary schools. It simply depends upon whether they are relevant where you live. That's especially true for names, which is culturally dependent. It is also true for the culturally dependent aspects of dates/time, though there are obscure bits that are only relevant to certain disciplines.
nkrisc 24d ago
Which is pretty absurd because twins aren’t even that uncommon. I would bet most people on the planet know or are related to twins.
- hamper653 24d ago
  Every person on the planet is related to twins.
  - nkrisc 24d ago
    What a pointless point to make. I’ll spell it out for you: related within a generation or two. There are no twins in my family that I know of for several generations, for example. Thus I would say I’m not related to any twins because I’m not in any meaningful way, even if there might be twins somewhere in my ancestral history. If you mean that all humans are related, that is true but a completely useless fact in this context.
    - hamper653 24d ago
      Not every word in a conversation needs to be useful.
      - anon48293 24d ago
        Apparently not even entire replies, so I’ll join in with one.
        hamper653 24d ago
        Indeed.
      - nkrisc 24d ago
        Those are the ones better left unsaid.
        23d ago
another-dave 24d ago
I imagine that it probably went like this "what about identical twins?" / "Don't worry about that for now, we'll solve for it before we go live, but it's not in this milestone". Then someone pulls rank and decides the product is "good enough, we can't wait for all bugs to be fixed" and gets it deployed.
- mr_toad 24d ago
  Issues get closed to make the metrics look good, not because they’re actually fixed.
dgellow 24d ago
Based on my experience I assume someone mentioned the risk, others said it’s unlikely and only a small percentage, that we should care about the 99% for now. Then the issues isn’t revisited until someone impacted complains enough. p99 is ok for web stuff, not for systems that impacts people in their life, but I’ve seen too often things being dismissed because they are edge cases (which becomes an actual real issue at the scale of a country of course)
wat10000 24d ago
Maybe they didn’t care. Identical twins are a fraction of a percent of the population. Excluding them (really, only half of them) from the customer base wouldn’t hurt noticeably.

cm2187 24d ago

What is strange is that even the best face recognition algorithms have false positive. So surely they must have planned for two unrelated customers resolving to the same embeddings.

ginko 24d ago

Anyone have any idea how this can happen? Surely the boys have different first names, so how can the system mix them up?

contubernio 24d ago
One imagines they are far more worried about person X fraudulently claiming to be person Y than they are about occasionally causing problems for identical twins. Obviously the solution is to accompany facial recognition with DNA tests.

netsharc 24d ago

One kid needs a goatie: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fartworks.thetvdb.com%2Fbanners%2Fseries%2F73871%2Fepisodes%2F603a4e58da602.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9cef7f481d83057b58dd396b5c6be279bd8a72442679fc0b1d7f007327de53f3 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...