Harvard, Linux Foundation launch open-source wallet for selective data sharing

The internet is seeing a wide-scale push towards identity verification and age assurance, but the question remains: how can users ensure their privacy? Researchers at Harvard have developed their own solution, the Keyring wallet, an open-source identity verification tool that allows users to prove their identity with biometrics and choose which data they want to share with online platforms.

The wallet was launched in April by the Applied Social Media Lab (ASML) at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. It was developed in collaboration with the Linux Foundation’s Decentralized Trust and could help distinguish people from AI agents, provide age assurance and even determine the origin of certain content, according to Brendan Miller, ASML’s principal engineer.

The app is meant for everyone, from regular users who want more privacy to members of organizations that want to prove their affiliation and content publishers, influencers and journalists. Verification is performed using standard iOS and Android biometric authentication, stored on-device. Users can also add verifiable credentials such as mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs).

ASML envisions three use cases for the Keyring wallet: the first allows users to link social media profiles to prove they control a particular username on a social platform.

The team demonstrated this last year by issuing a verifiable credential from X using a browser extension called CredSnap. That credential was downloaded on the wallet and used to add proof to X’s rival BlueSky that a user controls a certain user account.

“This is something that content creators might like to do, or publishers to show that you are the same person on blue sky as you are on X,” Miller noted during the demonstration.

The second use case for Keyring is sharing information such as age in a privacy-preserving manner. For this, the wallet would rely on data from the Department of Motor Vehicles’ (DMV) mDLs, but only show a confirmation that a user is over 18 years of age.​

The feature could find popularity as age-based restrictions on social media proliferate across the U.S.

Finally, ASML’s most original idea may be person-to-person relationship credentials, which allow for trusted social and professional connections without an intermediary. Two people, for instance, could meet at a professional conference and confirm they met in person without sharing their data with a platform like LinkedIn.

Over time, the feature could have more potential. Each verified connection could contribute to a decentralized trust graph, enabling everyone in the network to have a trusted credential. The credential could serve as proof of personhood (PoP), confirm content provenance, and even serve as proof of age for people who don’t own an mDL.

“If I verified a couple of social media accounts and several relationships, maybe that’s proof-of-personhood that doesn’t require a government account,” says Miller.

The idea is still a hypothesis, but in the future, it could help solve some of the challenges in the social media ecosystem, he adds. ASML has been working on credential specifications with the  Linux Foundation’s Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group.

The technology’s main challenge, however, is securing buy-in from institutions, governments, and corporations, as they need to issue and recognize verified credentials, according to Yajaira Gonzalez, a product leader at ASML.

“Incentives for all of these entities to join into this model are misaligned because currently they do benefit a lot from owning and controlling your data, because at the end of the day, they monetize it,” Gonzalez told The Harvard Gazette.

Pressure from users to control more of their data, however, could change that, she adds.

The Keyring app is open-source and available on GitHub.

Article Topics

Berkman Klein Center  |  biometrics  |  data privacy  |  digital wallets  |  Harvard University  |  identity verification  |  Keyring wallet  |  Linux Foundation  |  open source