First off, apologies for the bad puns in the headline. I am a dad though. So bad dad puns just come with the territory. Here, I saw a chance for a double, so had to take it.
Today it’s time to discuss some pros, cons, risks, and mitigations for the reality that our cellphones have accidentally become our gatekeepers to all manner of things digital. And often physical as well. You likely already know how integrated, (and dependent), a lot of digital activities have become on our mobile devices. But how? And what might this mean? Smartphones as identity gatekeepers has been discussed before. However, what we’re experiencing now in the mid 2020s is arguably a new level.
How did our cell phone companies become the gatekeepers of our identities?
How many things now push for multi-factor authentication via our smartphones? There’s products where it seems if you don’t have a smartphone, you’re simply not going to be able to participate. How might this play out? Do phone companies know about this? Of course. Will they try to exploit this role to just extract more fees given they’re arguably in strategically poor commodity businesses with competitive margin pressure?
Phones are no longer just credentials; they’re becoming identity custodians. Security is often thought of as three things: What you have, (such as debit card), what you know, (PIN code), and what you are, (biometrics.) With our phones we seem to have shifted from just something you have to the thing that vouches for everything else.
Recovery, coercion, or loss were not first-class design considerations.
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