(This article originally appeared in Medium)
In the dawning days of the web, every page visited was for public consumption. The first time someone needed to visit a page and share trusted information the need for a username and password was born.
Ever since that day every trusted connection has demanded its own username and seperate secret password. It’s a nightmare. I am the same person. Why do I need a seperate persona for every site, app and service I visit? We are all sick of it.
It's a nightmare. I am the same person. Why do I need a seperate persona for every site, app and service I visit? We are all sick of it.Google and Facebook saw this problem and offered us “Social Sign On” which was great, in theory, but almost immediately was abused by the very people offering this solution.
Instead of giving US a convenient way to authenticate our digital selves they turned the offer into a mass tracking and profiling opportunity that exploits anyone using it. And a branding exercise too. I’m not Ric Richardson. I’m Ric at gmail.com. They’ve branded me!
I’m not Ric Richardson. I’m Ric at gmail.com. They’ve branded me!
What I want is one universal persona. My digital self. An identity, that once authenticated, can move, interact and do anything in a trusted way. And not be exploited. After all it is the most personal thing about my online self. My identity.
So lets rewind 60 years to the day the first username and password was used. Lets undo 6 decades of servers storing our passwords and us having to remember a different password for every place we visit.
What if there was a trusted reliable service that gave us one secure universal identity and one simple source of authentication? Where any company or service could connect to us without fear that some middleman would exploit our relationship. Where commerce, well being and trust were all foundations of how our digital relationships worked?
When I agreed to cofound Haventec with my friend Tony Castagna I wanted to build a world where my parents could remember a 4 digit PIN and safely use it to logon to everything. Their bank, their grocery store, their electricity company, their email service. Everyone. I could have integrated biometrics but we need something we can change if we get hacked. You can’t change your thumbprint. You can’t change your face. But one universal 4 digit PIN you CAN change. Easily. And best of all its easy to remember.
My parents are both gone. I miss them terribly. But my mission for them remains.
I will not consider Haventec finished until there is a simple powerful and ultimately secure universal authentication system, that anyone can use, that every business and organisation can connect to and where every person has their own safe secure and autonomous identity.
A service that is free of commercial self interest and gives every Internet user their own digital persona. After all, in reality we only have one life to manage, why shouldn’t our digital life be the same?
Ric is championing self sovereign identity, personal data autonomy and open commerce through his work at Minister Dominello’s DIMAC committee, his co-founding of Haventec and his work with an international conglomerate of business leaders who deeply value and honour individual free will, privacy and the inalienable rights of a person over their own data.
