DriverAuth: Behavioral Biometric-based Driver Authentication Mechanism for On-demand Ride and Ridesharing Infrastructure

On-demand ride services and the rideshare infrastructure primarily focus on the minimization of travel time and cost. However, the safety of riders is overlooked by service providers. For driver authentication, existing identity management methods typically check the driving license, which can be easily stolen, forged, or misused. Further, background checks are not performed at all; instead, social profiles and peer reviews are used to foster trust, thereby compromising the safety and security of riders. Moreover, the present mechanism seems ineffective in discontinuing a malicious driver from offering the services. In this paper, we present DriverAuth - a fully transparent and easy-to-use authentication scheme for drivers that is based on common behavioral biometric modalities, such as hand movements, swipes, and touch-strokes while the drivers interact with the dedicated smartphone-based application for accepting the booking. A preliminary study of behavioral biometric-based approaches offers a usable verification mechanism on smartphones that could be a potential solution to improve the safety of riders in the emerging on-demand ride and the rideshare infrastructure.