Incorrect Liveness Rejections

Update timeline

1. resolved Aug 20, 2025, 10:06 AM UTC

   A technical issue with our video codec checks caused some limited number of applicants undergoing the liveness check between 16:10 UTC and 16:36 UTC to be incorrectly rejected with "Fraudulent liveness" (FRAUDULENT_LIVENESS) rejection reason after several faulty re-tries. Other types of checks were not affected. Please, see the post-mortem for detailed description.

2. postmortem Aug 20, 2025, 10:06 AM UTC

   ### **Incident Timings** **19 Aug 2025:** 16:10 UTC – 16:36 UTC ### **Incident Summary** On 19 Aug, between 16:10 and 16:36 UTC, a technical issue with our video codec checks caused some limited number of applicants undergoing the liveness check to be incorrectly rejected with "Fraudulent liveness" \(FRAUDULENT\_LIVENESS\) rejection reason after several faulty re-tries.Other types of checks were not affected. As a mitigation effort, our Team has identified all the affected applicants and changed the rejection to BAD\_SELFIE, where possible. We have also marked all of such applicants with a special note, containing the following text: > _The applicant’s liveness check was mistakenly rejected because of an internal error._ > > _Our system incorrectly flagged it as a deepfake and rejected it automatically._ > > _This issue took place from 16:10 to 16:33 UTC on 19 August 2025._ > > _If you need further assistance, please reach out to the support team._ > > _We apologize for the inconvenience._ ‌ We did not automatically update applicants to avoid unintended disruptions in your integrations and data flows. This way, you remain in full control of how affected records are handled. ### **Root Cause** The issue was caused by a technical problem with our Liveness AI service, leading the video codec detector to wrongly flag part of the video frames as suspicious and trigger automatic rejections. ### **Action Plan** Our engineering team will review the affected service in detail and work on making it more robust to prevent similar issues in the future. ### **Conclusion** If you encounter an applicant with a note, you can choose to reset their profile manually \([Dashboard](https://docs.sumsub.com/docs/reset-applicant-profile), [API](https://docs.sumsub.com/reference/reset-applicant)\) or contact our support team for help should you need any additional assistance.