800
Stop Treating Phone Numbers As A Digital ID
(notthesolution.substack.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
800 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
61749 readers
2010 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I can criticize the modern web for a lot of things, but as long as we have situations where we want to check whether an account is a real person, as opposed to FarmingBot #295038, they need something. I'm not a fan of phone verification, but I'd only criticize it when we have alternatives.
I'd even be in favor of some kind of one-way algorithm by which a trusted real-person-identifying entity could tell a random third party site: Yes, this is a genuine human.
The technology has existed since the 80s.
X509 certificates would allow a government agency to sign a digital identity indicating that it's legitimate, would allow for remote revocation in the event of loss or theft, and can be easily integrated with every existing computer and browser.
An issued physical card would resemble a credit card, with a chip in it. Other physical form factors can take the shape of USB-devices which bundle the card and the reader into a single device.