Self Sovereign Identity for the Layman
If the term ‘self sovereign identity’ feels strange or alien to you, don’t be alarmed. You’ve probably used SSI in your daily life already.
Ever used a driver’s license to prove your age at a bar? Or maybe used a phone bill to prove your address? A student ID to get discounted tickets at a movie theater? A driver’s license isn’t a ‘getting into bar’ license any more a phone bill is a proof of your address, and yet, in the physical world, you can use them for these purposes, out of their original context anyway.
This is because in the physical world, you are sovereign over the physical credential. You control it, you control how to use it. The credential is verifiable, so that a person can glean all the relevant information directly from the credential itself, along with certain degree of trust that it is not a forged document, without having to talk to the issuer at all.
Another word for this type of identity is possession based identity — you are who you say you are because you possess something.
Online, this all falls apart. Online, we don’t control our credentials, websites do, and they verify us with some secret only we could know — usually a password.
This is knowledge based identity — you are who you say you are because you know something. Knowledge Based Identity has a whole host of problems dealing with privacy, security, and portability.
Privacy
If your identity is provided for you by a corporation, then they get to track everywhere you go, where you use the credential, and how often you use it. This allows platforms like Facebook and Google to collect data on you even when you’re not using their websites directly!
Security
For websites that now have to maintain databases of usernames and passwords, they’ve turned themselves into targets for hackers. Hackers can breach a single database, and walk away with thousands of users credentials
Portability
Unlike physical identity cards, digital credentials are tied to the service you create them with. Imagine if you had to verify yourself with every bar you wanted to go to and maintain an separate account with each of them! Digital Cards allow you to go form website to website reusing the same credentials
