Selective disclosures

You may have already heard of selective or partial credential disclosures, where the credential owner does not want to reveal all of the information present in his credential, but only the data necessary for a given purpose. This concept of disclosing only selective data is nowadays becoming a highly demanded and a useful feature in online world.

Let me start with one real life example: Imagine purchasing an alcoholic beverage in store where one needs to prove himself to be of a respective age by presenting his credential- ID card or driver's license- to the salesperson. With a physical ID card a credential holder reveals not only his age, but also the date of his birth, his full name, address and birth number, which are his private, personal data he may wish not to share with any unauthorised person. Using physical credentials it is impossible to conceal these pieces of information.

On the other hand when using online verifiable credentials you have the option to reveal only the selective verifiable data from your credential, leaving the rest of them concealed. In this specific use case of buying an alcoholic beverage the salesperson (verifier) requests selective data disclosure from the buyer (holder of the online verifiable ID credential (credential)) to be able to verify the buyer's age. Firstly, Verifier requests the credential and specifies the information that the Holder should disclose (age of the Holder). Holder can see what info is requested to be revealed from his credential. Now it is up to the Holder to either accept the request and present his credential (disclosing only the information the verifier requested) or to decline the request. When Holder presents credential to Verifier, only the requested info of either reaching or not reaching the respective age will be revealed (not the date of birth, name, permanent address, or education degree, etc., which are also part of the credential). All the other information from the credential will remain concealed to the verifier.

Other use cases where selective disclosure may find its use are for example concert tickets with name on it, where only selective info about the name is disclosed from the credential of the ticket holder. Another example may be disclosing info about the University, credential holder is attending, for the ability to apply for student discounts.

In order to be able to use selective disclosure capabilities, online verifiable credential needs to be issued by an issuer that provides the ability to issue such a credential.

Triveria wallet platform provides issuer, holder and verifier with these exact capabilities of handling credentials with selective disclosures. In the following video you can see this selective disclosure process in real use.

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Viktor.