Digital identity is the way citizens identify themselves in an ever-growing digital world. With the expansion of internet worldwide, users acquire tools that allows them to interact with their fellow citizens, but with people outside their immediate surroundings as well, with sites like Facebook or Twitter. Nevertheless, sociability isn’t the only function when it comes to digital identity; it can also work to identify users on the digital environment, helping them access services which could only be reached by physical means in earlier times. Digital identification serves as a mean to acquire financial services, such as e-commerce or bank payments, but also government services, such as electronic voting, social security membership or cadaster registry. Digital identity has also its negative side. Exposed personal data online can be used by hackers or cybercriminals to access information that permits them to commit fraud, for example with phishing emails or identity theft. Therefore, gaining access to online services comes at a cost: identity must be proven flawlessly. In this sense, biometric technology is a proven method to determine a person’s identity efficiently, in terms of accuracy, cost, reliability, scalability and seamless experience.
Citizen’s digital identity grows hand by hand with an expanding interaction with digital tools, a bond which enhances awareness of its underlying importance. An adequate management of digital identity is essential to the success of a new digital era transformation, and taking advantage of it by the means of identity validation helps the strengthening of a safe environment where public institutions, private institutions, and specially the individual can interact and take advantage of digital tools.
What is digital identity?
Digital identity refers to all aspects that allow a person to define itself and differentiate from the rest on digital environments, which in turn are enhanced by the use of internet. Therefore, the capacities of digital identity are strongly shaped by the characteristics of the internet, both in its strengths and in its limitations. For example, one thing that internet allows is, when an individual develops her digital identity, she is not limited by her physical surroundings, and this enables the individual to interact with other regions worldwide. On the other hand, interaction with different systems through decentralized technology makes it more difficult for the individual to control the information linked to his digital identity.
When using the internet, people generate a set of personal data that becomes part of their digital identity. For example, many websites request data that identifies them, such as their name, date of birth, place of birth and so on. But additionally, due to participation in social networks, people also share information related to their profession, workplace or place of residence. Secondly, there is information that goes beyond the person’s personal data, that is, their behavior. For example, the time of day in which they access a service, the type of transactions they make, the places from which they connect to a service, etc. Finally, there is a third type of data that is obtained through an analysis of the previous two, useful to predict the person’s future actions, or classify the person within a certain group. These 3 types of data are attributed to what in [FG2009] refers to as declared, acting and inferred identity.
Advantages of using digital identity
When interaction through digital media increases, so does the digital trail the person leaves behind, which strengthens the individual’s digital identity. As mentioned before, some aspects of this digital identity are under complete control of the person, and are mainly used in social networks. This clear adoption of digital identity occurs primarily in younger people, and it also varies as there is greater contact with digital tools. For example, [EUR2011] shows that 43% of “digital youth” were willing to share personal information on the Internet, while this value decreased to 33% in the rest of the population. This appropriation of digital identity allow these people to establish social links and access personalized information, and is the basis of social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
However, not all digital activities have a social objective; for example, they can facilitate processes that are usually conducted in the physical world, such as paying a bank account, making some purchase for some electronic commerce, or access some public service. This type of non-contact activities require the person to identify herself, reason that leads her to use some elements of her digital identity. However, since the purpose of an identification system is not aimed to be a social activity, using the person’s profile on her social networks as a mean to identify her requires an effort that most of the time is not completely achieved. In any case, secure and non-face-to-face access to digital services is one of the obvious advantages of proper management of digital identity.
Banks are an industry that can exemplify how using digital identity improves the efficiency of some processes and also brings advantages for users. Today, most banks have mobile phone apps that allow their clients to make transactions such as utility payments, bank transfers and purchases. As expected, these type of transactions require a process in which the individual’s identity is validated through a variety of channels. Digital services such as those mentioned above generate value for customers by reducing the cost in time and money, and also reducing the operational burden of banks.
But the advantages of using digital services are not exclusive to banking industry. Government is especially relevant if we consider that its main activity is to provide different services to citizens, regardless of their socio-economic background, geographical location, etc. Government may provide secure and massive attention around its geographical jurisdiction to open up for a diverse set of services such as the exercise of electronic voting, automatized registration for the cadaster, access to benefits such as subsidies, or services such as health or social security. In any case, the impact of digital activity is also evident in other sectors that seek to have a mass adoption, such as the telecommunications industry, health or the most recent Fintech industry.
Risks of digital identity
Digital identity is a social interaction that compromises efforts from different sectors, and one of them is the management required to protect it, that is, the way in which it is possible to generate, maintain, modify and, if necessary, eliminate the data associated with the identity of a person. Some of these challenges are directly related to the protection of personal data, which is an issue that has been discussed for decades. In fact, as early as the 1980s, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) established a series of principles for the protection and cross-border flow of data. These principles are those of limitation in the collection, quality of data, specification of purpose, limitation of use, security measures and openness.
However, due to the rapid transformation in the field of digital technology, the principles of data protection are under discussion, as the chances of violation increase due to the multiplication of channels, that is, all entities with which the individual interacts digitally. One of these forms of crime is phishing, defined in [MGM2018] as when “a person pretends to be another before third parties, either privately or publicly. Generally, the purpose of this impersonation is illegal, or has the purpose of committing a damage. ” According to Colombian Penal Code, in article 296, impersonation fraud occurs when the name, age, marital status, or “any quality that can have legal effects”, are replaced by an identity thief [LAW2020]. Impersonation fraud exists when one seeks to commit another crime, that is, when the impersonator seeks an identity different from their own in order to obtain benefits by illicit means. The impersonator can steal the victim’s information in order to obtain access to his bank account, a crime considered as fraud or scam, or on the other hand he can access a digital profile by stealing a password, in which case he would be infringing on the crime of identity theft.
Key factors for the use of digital identity
The ability to access traditional services in a non-face-to-face way, or even to transform an industry through digital capabilities depends on the one hand on the state of the art of the technological adoption processes of each industry, and on the other hand on structural factors.
Identity validation using digital identity is an expanding field, now more than ever with the rise of biometric technologies, since biometrics don’t request the user to add any element to their identity, or memorize access codes. Biometric technologies are based on the validation of the physical characteristics of the person, for example the fingerprint, the voice, the face, the iris or the way of walking. Each of these methods has different characteristics in terms of accuracy, cost, reliability, scalability and seamless experience. For example, the fingerprint is a biometric feature that has traditionally been used in many countries, and is included in many identity documents. However, today there is no reliable method to capture the fingerprint massively and securely, since this capture requires specific hardware that is not possible to deliver to each person. On the other hand, iris validation is an element that has great reliability, but requires specific conditions for sampling, and also requires specific equipment, which makes it ideal for places with high security requirements such as airports. On the other hand, facial recognition is a mechanism that has gained interest in recent years due to the development of techniques that have increased its accuracy considerably, even more with a continuously growing industry of mobile phones that can capture images with high resolution on low cost apparels.
The penetration of mobile phones is a fundamental element to measure the possible success of any digital transformation initiative, and this is especially relevant in Latin America, where broadband penetration levels vary from country to country. According to [GSM2018], the number of broadband connections in the region in 2017 was 477 million, and by 2025 this number is expected to rise to 733 million, an increase of 71%. This is a positive perspective for the digital transformation if we consider that the projections indicate that in 2025 cell phone penetration will be 65%. In addition, currently more than half of mobile connections use 4G, which provides sufficient transmission rates for the adoption of different digital services. Likewise, there is an acceleration in the adoption of smartphones, a fundamental element that allows access to most digital services. In fact, by 2025, the percentage of connections with smartphones is expected to exceed 78%. In the case of Colombia, more than half of the population with mobile lines have a smartphone, and there is a subscriber penetration of 69%. The national government, through the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (MinTIC), promotes initiatives that seek to increase broadband internet coverage in 10,000 rural areas [MIN2020]. This difference in coverage between urban and rural areas is a global problem, and in Latin America this is emphasized by the dimensions of the territory and the conditions of difficult access.
Conclusions
The growth of digital identity enables people to interact safely in a digital environment as long as correct measures are taken. This means that tools are necessary to enable people (owners of personal data) and institutions to validate their identity to avoid abuse and fraudulent activities. Current developments in biometrics, and infrastructure development conditions in the region grant access to a big slice of the population to access digital services, leading to an improvement in people’s life. However, efforts are still required in the region to permit this type of benefits to reach the entire population. Technological conditions and public and private efforts are expected take advantage of an ever expanding digital environment and to benefit a large part of the region’s population during the 2020s.
Written by: Diego Pacheco-Páramo and Nicolás Spijkers
Translated by: Anasol Monguí
Biography
[FG2009] Fanny Georges, « Identité numérique et Représentation de soi : analyse sémiotique et quantitative de l’emprise culturelle du web 2.0. », Réseaux, 154., 2009, 165-193 p
[EUR2011] SPECIAL EUROBAROMETER 359 Attitudes on Data Protection and Electronic Identity in the European Union
[GSM2018] La Economía Móvil en América Latina y el Caribe 2018. GSM Association.
[MIN2020] MinTIC publica borrador del proyecto que llevará Internet a 10.000 zonas rurales del país. Enero 11 de 2020. https://www.mintic.gov.co/portal/inicio/Sala-de-Prensa/MinTIC-en-los-Medios/125620:MinTIC-publica-borrador-del-proyecto-que-llevara-Internet-a-10-000-zonas-rurales-del-pais
[MGM2018] Universitat Politecnica de Valencia. Suplantación de personalidad en Internet. Trabajo Fin de Máster. Minerva Gámiz Mejias.
[LEY2020] Leyes.co Código Penal Artículo 296 Colombia