Identity codelabs

I am honored to be your guide through this journey of exploring Identities on the web, this will be a series of codelabs to try out different identities approaches and implementations on the web, the goal of this series is to understand the types of identities, the ideas behind it and how it is being implemented whether you are a developer or user and what is the point of all this diversity.

So the question comes, what is an Identity on the web?

Your digital identity isn’t like a passport in the real world but rather

it is much deeper than that, it is who you are in the digital world, which is all of your interactions with all that is on the internet, every click, every search, and every transaction. This can be a powerful tool to build a reputation and make an online presence engaging in trusted transactions, but how can it be trusted if you don’t know who is managing those identities? Where is all your private data and personal information being kept and how? Are there different ways of managing it? Would you trust any entity with this sensitive information? We have all heard about tons of sensitive information about users being leaked due to the irresponsibility of the entities that were storing those data like some social media companies.

If someone were to hold our identity what would they be able to do?

    they would be able to:

• control our account and access our private data
• communicate with other people using our name
• act as if they were us and there is no telling what they can do at this point

 So how can we keep our digital identity safe? who can we trust? 

Trust has been a focus of efforts for so long but is it really the solution? Even if we could trust an entity to handle all our identities, would that solve the issue, or would create another? Trusting just one entity to handle such valuable information would make it the main target for hackers and would make it a battlefield to steal and abuse our data – because in this era the real fortune isn’t a goldmine, a real fortune at these times is data. If we want to never save such data in a single place we can’t leave it handled by a single entity. We can’t make it Centralized and that is the real problem.  The solution we should be searching for is how to make it Decentralized?  How can we distribute our data around the world while still being able to communicate and keep it safe and private? Is such a mission even possible?

Introducing Decentralized Identity

It is an emerging concept that gives back control of identity to the consumer by various methods
like the use of an identity wallet that users create and keep saved anywhere by themselves while still being able to be verified using a key associated with their wallets, so they become the sole holder of their identity information. It is much bigger than that, but this is a  simple explanation of what is considered to be the next revolution of the web and we are here to discuss the various types of identities, the benefits, the struggles, and the future.

Main points that will be included in this series

• Decentralized Identity
• Identity in federated applications
• Identity in p2p applications
• Blockchain Identity Systems
• Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs)
• DID Implementations

So let’s make the web finally ours!

I will be seeing you again soon so don’t worry too much, our journey is just beginning, stay curious and be safe.

Thank you for reading!