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0 pointsgeorgyo3y ago0 comments

Your idea is comes from a good place, but identity theft is already a thing in the real world. Digital identities would also be very stealable. This malware more harmful in the long term. Imagine if your Twitter gets hacked and your digital identity makes it so your Gmail gets blocked.

Similar, the internet is already very difficult for the people with limited means. This would make it even harder.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

Schroedingersat3y ago· 2 in thread

Easy solution.

Go down to your local post office.

They physically hand you an identity token on a physical $2 2fa device if you give some evidence you live nearby. You can put down the deposit or hand over the device for an old id which is cleared and reused.

It's traceable to the post office but no further, nothing is recorded other than that the token is deployed and roughly when.

Local communities can be responsible for cleaning up local messes. No need for the scammers two cities over to effect your reputation. No need for a corrupt employee handing out tokens to effect the reputation of the token you got ten years ago.

georgyoOP3y ago

So every country in the world should simultaneously roll out this $2 2FA token?

And the governments of the world are going to do this is an anonymous way?

Who is going to manufacture these 8 billion (Or at least 3 billion if we only count Facebook's MAU) tokens?

And there still needs to be a global database of valid identifiers, else anyone could just create a software token that they can reprogram ever second.

And we expect all people to carry these 2FA tokens perfectly?

And what happens when someone looses this token? The post office has way to prove you owned that token in your proposal.

Same thing for revoking a token. There is no identity out of the token, so how do you revoke it after it is lost? People are not willing to store a piece of paper in a security deposit box.

This "easy" solution is impossible in practice.

Schroedingersat3y ago

You're projecting use cases that weren't proposed.

The only purpose is to provide evidence of not being a bot. Not to log in or verify identity. You don't need a server or proof that a particular token is owned by a particular person, just a cert chain and a list of postcodes with current public keys. The post office has a private key. They sign a message saying 'the holder of this token walked into the store'. Let servers make whatever judgements they wish about the chain's credibility. If a particular key signs lots of bots then you know where to look for the source of the bot farm and the people that live there know where to look to fix their reputation.

It doesn't need to roll out simultaneously. Just be an alternative to captcha that isn't as abusive as device attestation.

The manufacturers will be the same ones that manufacture the hundreds of billions of usb drives and phones and smart light bulbs.

The only problems are it's not as useful for abusing users or spying on citizens as revoking access to general purpose computing, and idiots who project problems onto it that come from use cases that are not proposed or say 'big number make thing impossible'.

jabbany3y ago

It's not really my idea (has been proposed multiple times long ago to the point it has even been implemented in many places).

As for identity theft, it's actually not that common/easy except in the US (which has no centralized national ID issuer and largely depends on hacks building on the SSN).

An besides, protecting digital identity is already important even without this bootstrapping.

> Imagine if your Twitter gets hacked and your digital identity makes it so your Gmail gets blocked.

Flip the services around and you have the reality of today.

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