The Privacy Paradox: How Digital IDs are Empowering Consumers to Take Control of their Digital Existence

Standing in line at an airport is a bad experience. Shuffling through your wallet once you reach the front of that line only to realize you don’t have your driver’s license, that’s a worse experience. From boarding airplanes to purchasing alcohol, the technology that enables digital driver’s licenses already exists, but with adoption levels still so slow, the question is what’s the hold up?

“I always liken it to chess and checkers — checkers, super easy to play. And giving access to people is playing checkers. Giving access to people based upon them being who they say they are, that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, that they are where they're supposed to be, that they've been given approval for those assets, that's chess.There's this notion of authentication authorization approval, and today it's expanded into verification and proofing. So four key components and just like chess, you learn how to play it relatively quickly, but you spend the rest of your life mastering it.”

At least 17 states in the continental US have considered or implemented digital driver’s licenses, but few have been able to create a system that leads to widespread adoption across the population and in government offices alike. On this episode ofIT Visionaries, Richard Bird, the Chief Customer Information Officer at Ping Identity, explains what the hold up is in getting digital driver’s licenses to all 50 states, and he sheds light on the biggest obstacle that is stalling the adoption process.

Main Takeaway

• The Privacy Paradox: From GDPR to CCPA, all data privacy legislation requires companies to protect consumers from harm that could come by way of using its product or services. But there are few or no rules or guidelines that protect users from their own digital identities. This means that companies must take on a larger role in not only making sure that users’ digital identities are secure, but that they are educating users on the proper ways to protect themselves.
• You’re So Predictable: Digital identity experiences need a vessel to live on such as smartphones or wearable devices, but one of the big concerns from implementing these pieces of equipment is the amount of data that will be gathered from these events. What is the appropriate level of data aggregation and how much is too much when it comes to being able to predict things such as human behaviors and predictability patterns?
• A More Inclusive Environment: Digital identity has the power to be a key driver to globalgrowth and digital transformation, but at the same time it can also lead to data biases that are collected from these. If someone fails to update an address on their driver’s license, that information could lead to misrepresentation of population.

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