Unfortunately, the U.S. gov has gone in the direction of using a shady private company ID.me [0] to provide this service. Starting 2022, the IRS is using ID.me to authenticate login to the irs.gov website. Same with California DMV. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID.me.

Millions of American citizen will be forced to provide their info to this private company. Authentication involves you providing your cell phone number, then uploading a photograph of your drivers license or passport with that phone and then allowing ID.me to scan your face using the same phone camera.

You may think if the IRS and DMV are using this company it must be a serious identity service vetted by homeland security and what not. I did some digging around.

ID.me has a shopping site where you can shop for deals on sunglasses, sneakers and food kits [1] https://shop.id.me/. They use .me which is the top-level domain for Montenegro.

There is one hackernews thread about this company filled with clearly fake reviews made by accounts created the day the post appeared [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13831921

What could go wrong ?