Technology Vision 2023 | When Atoms meet Bits #TechVision To start, it helps to consider two basic categories When our bank, work, or social apps want us to of identity: The 昀椀rst is core identity, or the primary prove who we are, what do they do? Send us a text identi昀椀er of who or what something is. These are message. We’ve taken a number we share publicly, created for general purpose, like a national ID or for those who want to communicate with us, and legal name logged in a registry. The second category turned it into proof of who we are—and now we is functional identity, which is created for a speci昀椀c are starting to see the consequences. In one type purpose to convey certain characteristics or data of attack called SIM-swapping, hackers use social about a particular thing—like the way a driver’s engineering tactics to convince mobile carriers to license number is created to convey someone is re-route a target’s phone traf昀椀c to a new SIM card. legally allowed drive, or the way internet cookies are At that point, any messages, calls, or veri昀椀cation used to manage sessions and your activity when codes sent to the target number are received by the traversing the web. attacker instead. In 2021, the FBI logged 1,611 of these attacks—this was 5x growth over the previous three Of course, internet cookies and (in some countries) years combined and amounted to an astounding driver’s licenses aren’t used exclusively for those 64 At this $42,000 in average damages per attack. dedicated purposes. In practice, all too often we point, if a hacker has your phone number, they may take functional pieces of information intended for as well be you. a speci昀椀c purpose and, in lieu of a better option, use them as core identity. Digitally, we see this happen all the time because the internet was not built with core identity in mind. Consider what is happening to phone numbers. The entire ecosystem has become overly reliant on Mobile phone numbers are a functional piece of leveraging functional data, like email addresses or contact information. Yet, our phone numbers have social logins, to access services or identify people increasingly become the gateway to our digital lives, across the web. But now the legacy of never having built a system for core digital identity is catching up such that they are being used like core identi昀椀ers.