If Identity Verification Fails

Failing an identity check minutes before an exam is distressing and reasonably common. It is almost never about you.

For planning a technical practice run alongside other commitments, the feature summary provides a useful time-recording reference. Keep the log under your control and record only what helps you prepare.

Why it happens

Lighting. The commonest cause by a long way: a window behind you, a single overhead bulb, an evening sitting.

A useful outside source on confidential emotional support is Samaritans. Compare it with your institution’s written procedure before making decisions.

Detection performance, which differs measurably by skin tone and is worse with head coverings. This is a documented limitation of the underlying technology, not a judgement about your appearance.

Appearance change since your enrolment photograph: hair, glasses, facial hair, weight, medical treatment, gender presentation.

Document quality: a worn card, a reflective surface, a photograph taken years ago.

And plain technical failure, which happens.

What to do, in order

Adjust the light first. A lamp in front of you, the curtain closed behind. This resolves a large share of cases in under a minute.

Clean the camera lens and check nothing is partially covering it.

Hold the document still, filling the frame, without a light source behind it.

Try once more.

Then stop and contact support. Repeated attempts rarely succeed after two failures and they consume the time you will want.

When you reach a person

State plainly: identity verification is failing, you have tried adjusting lighting, and you need an alternative route.

Most institutions have a human verification path. It may involve a staff member on a call, or checking against your student record.

Ask for the time to be adjusted if check-in has eaten into your exam. That request is reasonable and is frequently granted automatically.

Write it down

The time it started failing, what you tried, when you contacted support, what they said.

Four lines, written immediately afterwards rather than days later.

If the experience affected your performance, this is the record that supports saying so.

Preventing it next time

Update your enrolment photograph if your appearance has changed. Most institutions allow this and few students know.

Do the practice run, which surfaces this problem when it costs nothing.

And if you wear a covering, arrange the alternative verification described in its own note in advance.

If it keeps happening

Say so, in writing, to whoever administers the exams.

Repeated failure for one candidate is a technical problem with the system, not a pattern of behaviour, and it should be logged as such.

Ask for a permanent alternative verification route to be recorded against your account. That is a reasonable accommodation and it ends the problem.

The part worth saying

Being repeatedly not recognised by a system, in front of somebody, before a high-stakes exam, is a specific and unpleasant experience.

Students describe it as humiliating and it is reasonable to feel that.

It is also a technical limitation and not a statement about you, and knowing that in advance makes it considerably easier to handle in the moment.

What to check

Is your enrolment photograph current?

Do you know the human verification route at your institution?

Is there a lamp you can put in front of you?

And if this has happened before, is there a note on your record about it?

The point

Adjust the lighting, try once more, then stop and contact support.

Repeated attempts rarely succeed and they eat the time you will want.

Additionally

Ask for a permanent alternative verification route recorded against your account.

Repeated failure for one candidate is a technical problem, not a pattern of behaviour.

Finally

Ask for a permanent alternative verification route recorded against your account.

Repeated failure for one candidate is a technical problem, not a pattern of behaviour.

In summary

Ask for a permanent alternative verification route recorded against your account.

Repeated failure for one candidate is a technical problem, not a pattern of behaviour.

A note on this

Update your enrolment photograph if your appearance has changed.

Most institutions allow this and few students know.

Bottom line

Update your enrolment photograph if your appearance has changed.

Most institutions allow this and few students know.

Worth repeating

Almost everything in this collection comes down to three habits: prepare the technical side a week early, know what the process actually is before you need it, and write down the time whenever something unusual happens. None of them takes long, and between them they prevent or resolve the great majority of what goes wrong with monitored exams.