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Comment by creakingstairs | Hacker News Reader

Closest example I know of is Korean internet. It is almost nigh impossible to get an account in major websites without SSN and a phone number. Despite this, there are still countless bots and scammers that uses hacked or leaked personal data. So I’m not sure if it would be that effective

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I am thinking more like webauthn - but where I own a key pair, and I go to post office with my passport, they give me a nonce and prove that my it's my key pair then they post that public key is definitely me. I then can use that posting as my "username" and any challenge response includes the public key so they know that only I could be signing up

I am very aware of "designing a security system they themselves cannot break" and the difficulties of key management etc.

Would be interested in knowing more from smarter people

(probably need to build a poc - one day :-( )

> I own a key pair

Right there… it won't work with the general population.

something like 2 billion people have a phone with a secure enclave capable of this in their pockets today - and they use it everyday for logins, payment and paying at the car park.

We have the penetration

(Afaik smartphone penetration is around 4.5-5 BN, and something like 50%+ have secure enclaves but honestly Indont follow that deeply so would defer to more knowledgeable people)

That’s not your identity, it’s an access token protected by an advanced lock screen (which is greatly useful, but not the same). If you lose your device, the way you get back into your accounts is your de-facto identity—usually it ranges between the email you used during signup to your govt id.

There isn’t a widely deployed public key network with keys that represent a person, afaik. PGP is the closest maybe?

> something like 2 billion people have a phone with a secure enclave capable of this in their pockets today - and they use it everyday for logins, payment and paying at the car park.

They don't own a key pair. They carry one around, which is owned by google or some other entity?

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