Deepfakes Put Mass Biometrics Under Pressure

Image source: GigaChat

Natalia Kaspersky, president of InfoWatch, has criticized the mass rollout of biometric identification in Russia. She argues that deploying the system nationwide would be too expensive—and that deepfakes make it more vulnerable than it appears on paper.

Kaspersky compared biometrics with familiar passwords and pointed out that a nationwide system requires far more than collecting samples. Those samples must be stored and protected, while the supporting infrastructure must be maintained and upgraded. Each of those tasks creates additional costs.

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The quality of a biometric sample is another concern. Cameras, lighting and the conditions in which a person registers can all affect the result. But Kaspersky’s main argument is no longer about money. The more serious risk is how quickly faces and voices can be forged.

A few years ago, deepfakes were mainly seen as a novelty for social media. They are now being used in fraud schemes and attempts to bypass remote identity checks. That shifts the debate beyond the technology itself to the public’s trust in digital identification.

Russia’s Unified Biometric System and current use cases

Biometrics in Russia is no longer an experiment. The Unified Biometric System is already used for:

• Signing in to Gosuslugi;
• Issuing electronic signatures;
• Remote identification for banking services;
• Access to selected digital services without visiting an office.

The government and financial sector continue to expand those use cases. In spring 2026, major banks and digital-service operators again argued that biometrics could reduce queues and simplify remote customer service.

Trust, however, is not growing as quickly as adoption. According to a VTB survey, about 45% of Russians are willing to use biometrics instead of a passport to receive services. That is a substantial share for a relatively new practice, but it is still less than half the population. Any expansion therefore runs directly into the question of user consent.

Kaspersky’s position is cautious rather than outright hostile. She does not reject the technology, but she also does not want it to become a mandatory standard. That stance contrasts with banks and digital ecosystems that see biometrics as a way to reduce fraud losses and relieve pressure on branches. Both sides are weighing costs, but from opposite directions: one side counts deployment expenses, while the other focuses on the losses associated with avoiding digital verification.

Why mass biometric identification remains controversial

The debate has been recurring for several years. Authorities and banks initially promoted biometrics as a way to accelerate remote services. Critics repeatedly raised concerns about data leaks, false matches and the difficulty of protecting large stores of personal information.

The trade-off between convenience and security is particularly difficult: the wider the system is used, the greater the potential cost of an error. Biometrics also does not fit every situation. It can be useful for entering an office or confirming an in-app transaction, but conventional verification may work better when someone needs to recover access quickly or complete an unusual identity check.

Kaspersky’s implied recommendation is limited deployment rather than a nationwide rollout. Russia already has an established digital-identification market, with banks, government services and private platforms competing for the same login and identity-confirmation scenarios. Users increasingly choose the option they understand best, not necessarily the most advanced one.

If trust in biometrics does not grow faster than its implementation, the central issue will shift from convenience to the cost of errors in a system operating at national scale.