Marco della Cava

USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber rolled out a new feature Friday that requires some drivers to confirm their identities via a selfie photo before each shift.

Real-Time ID Check is aimed at both preventing fraudulent use of a driver's account and providing consumers with a greater degree of confidence in the ride-sharing company.

"Driver account sharing or theft is a low-frequency problem right now, but when it happens it's a high-severity thing for us so it makes sense to put our security resources on it," Uber chief security officer Joe Sullivan tells USA TODAY.

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"We've been testing this new system with tens of thousands of drivers in the past months, and 99% of the time the photos match up," he says. The few rejected photos "were all about bad lighting," he said.

Rider security is critical to the mushrooming valuations of transportation-as-a-service companies such as Uber and Lyft, which are estimated to be worth $67 billion and $5.5 billion, respectively.

WhosDrivingYou.org, a website run by the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association — whose members have been at odds with both Uber and Lyft for years — lists links to more that two-dozen accidents and incidents in 2016 involving ride-sharing drivers. And last winter, a Kalamazoo, Mich., man who was driving for Uber shot and killed six people in between driving shifts.

Uber's 2 million drivers are not employees of the company but contract workers, a issue that also has proved contentious and been the object of lawsuits. To help assuage drivers, Uber has been offering a range of services including help with retirement planning.

Sullivan adds that not every driver will be asked to perform the new selfie check "because we don't want to add a lot of friction to the system." Instead, algorithms will determine instances when the check might be needed, such as when a driver seems to be often signing into their account from a different phone or location.

Once the selfie is taken, the image is then processed using Microsoft Cognitive Services, which uses facial recognition software to confirm the driver's identity. "Humans can easily distinguish if two faces are the same person, but it's a little trickier for a computer," says Microsoft corporate vice president Andrew Shuman.

Uber testing self-driving cars in San Francisco

Microsoft's cloud-based service works by taking precise measurements of the distance between the eyes as well as of facial features such as the nose and lips. If there's no match to the photo on file, the driver's account will be temporarily shut down while an Uber employee investigates the discrepancy.

Uber currently provides consumers with a variety of information about their ride, including the driver's name, photo and their car's license plate, as well as a visual map of the car's location. But once the car arrives, it is up to the rider to determine if the photo and name match the person in the driver's seat.

"For our customers, we just want to make sure that the trust is there 100% of the time," says Sullivan.

Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava @marcodellacava.