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Comment by archerx

13 hours ago

What if I don’t have a smartphone?

No one is required to use EUDI: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...

Companies and providers (like banks) have to support it, but use is voluntary.

Check out the spec and legal framework, it actually makes sense and is open to different implementations, though you might need to certify it.

  • You are not required to accept anything other than digital ids. So from experience, whatever demands euid has will be what is required to identify you.

  • If they have to support something that most everybody has they will soon stop supporting alternatives that are not required by law. What then?

  • My prediction is that eventually services for people NOT using the digital ID will be so degraded to be almost useless or seriously disadvantageous.

    Kinda like the discrimination DB does for people using paper tickets vs those using the DB Navigator app.

I wonder if there will be a big enough market for a very compact smartphone equivalent device that can be used just for credentials? A device that is offline on standby except when you need it. Perhaps the size of a car key.

  • If it can go online, I'd prefer to use an android work (or user) profile with only auth apps in it, and nothing else.

    As a separate device, it should be offline always IMO, and perhaps the size of a passkey. Or one of those banking devices with a display that show an authenticated text saying what you are confirming.

  • What if it was the size of a credit card and it had stuff like your name, date of birth and even a picture of your face. I want to name this invention an ID card…

    • And if you added a cryptographic layer to it, with your own private key baked into it, you could both sign the documents, confirm your identity and the government could confirm it's actually you....

      ....wow, that would be reinventing the existing model of the leading ID cards....

      Crazy if you think about it :)

You're screwed. This has been the way for a while now. You cannot exist in society without a smart phone and it's only going to get worse.

  • Essential services (banks, government services, public transport) generally still support SMS as an alternative to their mobile apps when there's no completely offline process.

  • If you can't exist in society without a smart phone already, how is it going to get worse?

    • Perhaps you won't be able to exist in private without a smart phone. Or there will be some technology beyond a smartphone that you can't exist without.

  • ...without a smartphone that is surveilling you 24/7.

    Private smartphones are excluded already.