More than a video
Hire real people, not deepfakes
A video alone carries no record of how or where it was recorded. A McCoy IQ response does.
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The cost
Fake applicants crowd out real ones
Deepfake tools and cheap VPNs have made two lies easy to tell in a remote hiring process. A candidate can pose as a different person on video, and can make a response look like it was recorded in a different country than the one they are in.
The first cost is to honest candidates, who are drowned out by the noise. Every fake application takes a place in the pipeline. Recruiters spend time on fakers while real candidates, the ones who are motivated and genuinely interested in the role, wait longer for an answer.
Location lying matters for reasons well beyond wasted time. Work authorization, payroll tax, state residency rules, and in the most serious cases sanctions all depend on where an employee actually works.
A video carries a lot of signal about a person, their thought process, how they communicate, and whether they can speak intelligently about the work they do. What it does not automatically include is evidence that it is not a deepfake, or from where it was recorded. An emailed file, or even a live video call, cannot tell you which camera produced it or whether it is a deepfake.
Most deepfakes rely on a virtual camera, software that intercepts the video feed, edits it, and presents the result as if it came from a webcam. Real-time face swaps and voice cloning run through this layer. The browser is built to stop websites from inspecting devices, so the software on the employer’s side is unable to detect the swap.
Location has the same weakness. An IP address is one of the easiest things in computing to change. A commercial VPN costs a few dollars a month and makes a laptop in one country present as if it were in another.
What changes
What a McCoy response tells you
Candidates respond to a McCoy IQ challenge in the McCoy app, on their phone or tablet’s own camera. Because the recording happens inside the app, a response carries two signals you can check before you book an interview.
How it’s recorded
No virtual camera
Virtual cameras only run on a computer, never on a phone or tablet. A native iOS or Android app that you download from the Apple or Play stores records straight from the device’s camera. The setup that works against a browser cannot be used.
How virtual cameras and deepfakes actually workWhere it’s recorded
A country, not just an IP
Candidates can choose to share the country they recorded in. The country comes from the device’s GPS and appears next to the response in your portal. A VPN can make an IP address look like it’s anywhere, but a GPS location is much harder to fake. If a candidate says they are in one country and the response was recorded in another, you see it before you spend an hour on a call.
How location fraud works in remote hiringQuestions
Frequently asked questions
Does McCoy detect deepfakes?
No, and it does not need to. McCoy does not scan video for signs of manipulation. Most deepfakes need a virtual camera, and a virtual camera cannot run inside a native iOS or Android app like McCoy.
Can candidates fake a response with a deepfake?
It is much harder than on the computer-based tools in the news. Those deepfakes rely on a virtual camera that presents a fake feed as if it came from a real webcam. McCoy candidates record in our native iOS or Android app, on the phone or tablet’s own camera, where a virtual camera has nowhere to run. No solution is foolproof, but it takes the most common way to do a deepfake off the table.
Can candidates fake where they are?
They can hide it with a VPN, which swaps their IP address to look like another country for a few dollars a month. A VPN can’t touch GPS, though. When a candidate chooses to share their location, McCoy reads it from the device’s GPS and shows you the country they recorded in, so an IP in one place and a recording in another is easy to spot. It’s optional and country-level, and like any signal it’s a flag to look into, not proof on its own.
Is sharing a country required?
No. Candidates decide whether to share it, and they can remove it from a response before sending. When a candidate skips it, the response arrives with no country attached.
Does McCoy verify a candidate’s identity?
No. McCoy tells you how a response was recorded and, when the candidate chooses, the country it was recorded in. It does not confirm who is holding the phone. Identity verification is a separate step that belongs later in your process, once you have decided a candidate is worth the time.
See what a real response looks like
Generate a McCoy IQ challenge from a job description and watch how candidates answer it.
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