While we all just want to live in a purely digital world, there are still some services that need your real-life proof of identity. But bridging the two is one of the first steps towards making things easier and even more secure for us. Telegram is now launching a new feature on the messaging app called Telegram Passport wherein you can store your IDs and documents so you can use it for services that require your personal identification. Lest you think it’s dangerous to have your identity documents stored digitally, the service is actually fully encrypted.
Calling it a “unified authorization method”, all you would have to do is to upload your documents, whether it’s an ID, a birth certificate, a government document, or whatever it is that you would eventually need to prove your identity. You can then use it for services like ePayments.com, the first electronics payment system that supports this Telegram Passport feature for registration and verification. Hopefully more services would recognize this authorization method so that it will become more useful.
The important thing also is that just like the whole Telegram app itself, this feature has end-to-end encryption. While your identity documents and personal data will be stored in their cloud server, all that they will be able to see is “random gibberish”. The developers will not have access to the information stored and whatever you share will go directly to the recipient or service.
Telegram is also encouraging developers to connect their apps and services to Telegram Passport and it won’t cost a thing. You can access the API docs in order to build it into your app. They will also soon introduce third-party verification so that the apps won’t even need to access your documents itself and just rely on Telegram as a verification provider. You need to update your app to the latest version in order to start using the feature.
SOURCE: Telegram
