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Nowadays there are lots of security things, eg:

  • Digital signatures
  • Certificates
  • One Time Password devices like those used in home banking system

But no one gives you the possibility to verify identity with 100% certainty.

I know maybe this will be a complex or theorical topic but every security method can be bypassed, for example:

  • Someone can steal your pc and in your certified mail
  • Someone can steal your OTP devices and pretend to be you

In the future, how can technology help us exactly verify an identity? Maybe in the future, we will need to verify our real identity to trade money or for criminals...

Is this an important thing? Or maybe if there isn't a method to verify that identity, we have to accept this thing?

schroeder
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Emanuel Pirovano
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  • You are confusing "identity" with "authentication" – schroeder Dec 05 '17 at 14:52
  • Excuse , my english is not so good and i confused that word . But you have understand my question . I thought that this question was good. – Emanuel Pirovano Dec 05 '17 at 14:55
  • unfortunately, you are asking about a potential future - we can only guess about the future – schroeder Dec 05 '17 at 16:03
  • Sure, but i think that it is an interesting topic and read opinion of people might be interesting, in my opinion. – Emanuel Pirovano Dec 05 '17 at 16:08
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    Such a question is not a good fit for StackExchange – schroeder Dec 05 '17 at 16:10
  • You should ask yourself why you need to absolutely identify a person with 100% certainty. Often, only a form of relative authentication is needed: "the same entity that I contacted earlier (my mom: the woman that educated me)" ; "the entity that is legally recognized as" ; "the entity everybody seems to know". It depends on what you want to do that determines what form of authentication you need. Do you want to sue him/her ? Do you want to continue earlier conversation ? Do you want to contact the well-known person ? The kind of authentication you need, also gives you the trust root. – entrop-x Dec 05 '17 at 16:16

1 Answers1

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Factors to verify identity currently rely on 3 things: something you know, something you have, or something you are.

Something you know can be shared or discovered. That's probably the least secure of the three, yet it's the one that is used most.

Something you have can be duplicated or stolen.

That leaves us with something we are. how do establish identity with something that we are? The DNA of identical twins is identical, so even that isn't successful as it identifies the individual as one of two. Luckily, the irises of identical twins are different enough to establish identity. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/application/enterprise/entconfirmation.jsp?arnumber=5543237&icp=false . Using that, however, has its pitfalls as we'd need to ensure that the iris presented is not fraudulent, a picture, or a Demolition Man use.

Personally I think that, with current technology, we have to accept that proving an identity with 100% certainty isn't possible.

baldPrussian
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  • Twins can be differentiated by DNA ... just not using the standard forensic tests – schroeder Dec 05 '17 at 14:50
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    and you might have to explain the Demolition Man reference – schroeder Dec 05 '17 at 14:51
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    @schroeder: Wow; something we learned in school isn't true any more! I had to look that up - given what we know about how identical twins are created and what we were taught in school, I figured that wouldn't change. For anyone interested, there's more info here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/health/11real.html – baldPrussian Dec 05 '17 at 16:08
  • Well their genotype is (generally) identical. What changes are transposable elements, which everyone has. Your exact DNA makeup is not the same now as it was when you were born, for example, because of these transposable elements. – forest Apr 05 '18 at 06:01