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An alternative that preserves some privacy also doesn't seem that hard to imagine... though it probably has its own can of worms*. Basically, the core problem

An alternative that preserves some privacy also doesn't seem that hard to imagine... though it probably has its own can of worms*. Basically, the core problem is digital identities (accounts, IPs, phone #s etc.) are cheap to create (even considering captchas and all) so fraud is easy. The solution could be just to make it "costly" to create new digital identities. For example, you could get a "verified but anonymous" identity issued by locking some assets (could be real world money, or maybe something intangible like community reputation) as collateral with a trusted party (or, for the crypto people, the blockchain). If you misbehave, you lose your reputation on that identity (and essentially your collateral) and have to start over. This lets anyone bootstrap a "minimal" level of trust at the beginning before they can use time to prove themselves trustworthy. Note: This model might remind some of things like staking in crypto. However the idea is really not anything new... Putting money on the line is really how most low-trust bootstrapping happens. *: To name a few:(1) this can result in participation being gated by wealth, which can be unfair. (2) it makes accounts more valuable to hack so people need better security practices [re: twitter checkmark]. (3) one would need some authority to decide how accounts lose their collateral or maybe the collateral is just burned to create that initial credibility...

georgyo 4y ago
Your idea is comes from a good place, but identity theft is already a thing in the real world. Digital identities would also be very stealable. This malware more harmful in the long term. Imagine if your Twitter gets hacked and your digital identity makes it so your Gmail gets blocked. Similar, the internet is already very difficult for the people with limited means. This would make it even harder.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Easy solution. Go down to your local post office. They physically hand you an identity token on a physical $2 2fa device if you give some evidence you live nearby. You can put down the deposit or hand over the device for an old id which is cleared and reused. It's traceable to the post office but no further, nothing is recorded other than that the token is deployed and roughly when. Local communities can be responsible for cleaning up local messes. No need for the scammers two cities over to effect your reputation. No need for a corrupt employee handing out tokens to effect the reputation of the token you got ten years ago.
  - georgyo 4y ago
    So every country in the world should simultaneously roll out this $2 2FA token? And the governments of the world are going to do this is an anonymous way? Who is going to manufacture these 8 billion (Or at least 3 billion if we only count Facebook's MAU) tokens? And there still needs to be a global database of valid identifiers, else anyone could just create a software token that they can reprogram ever second. And we expect all people to carry these 2FA tokens perfectly? And what happens when someone looses this token? The post office has way to prove you owned that token in your proposal. Same thing for revoking a token. There is no identity out of the token, so how do you revoke it after it is lost? People are not willing to store a piece of paper in a security deposit box. This "easy" solution is impossible in practice.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      You're projecting use cases that weren't proposed. The only purpose is to provide evidence of not being a bot. Not to log in or verify identity. You don't need a server or proof that a particular token is owned by a particular person, just a cert chain and a list of postcodes with current public keys. The post office has a private key. They sign a message saying 'the holder of this token walked into the store'. Let servers make whatever judgements they wish about the chain's credibility. If a particular key signs lots of bots then you know where to look for the source of the bot farm and the people that live there know where to look to fix their reputation. It doesn't need to roll out simultaneously. Just be an alternative to captcha that isn't as abusive as device attestation. The manufacturers will be the same ones that manufacture the hundreds of billions of usb drives and phones and smart light bulbs. The only problems are it's not as useful for abusing users or spying on citizens as revoking access to general purpose computing, and idiots who project problems onto it that come from use cases that are not proposed or say 'big number make thing impossible'.
- jabbany 4y ago
  It's not really my idea (has been proposed multiple times long ago to the point it has even been implemented in many places). As for identity theft, it's actually not that common/easy except in the US (which has no centralized national ID issuer and largely depends on hacks building on the SSN). An besides, protecting digital identity is already important even without this bootstrapping. > Imagine if your Twitter gets hacked and your digital identity makes it so your Gmail gets blocked. Flip the services around and you have the reality of today.
mhink 4y ago
> Basically, the core problem is digital identities (accounts, IPs, phone #s etc.) are cheap to create (even considering captchas and all) so fraud is easy. The solution could be just to make it "costly" to create new digital identities. For example, you could get a "verified but anonymous" identity issued by locking some assets (could be real world money, or maybe something intangible like community reputation) as collateral with a trusted party (or, for the crypto people, the blockchain). If you misbehave, you lose your reputation on that identity (and essentially your collateral) and have to start over. This lets anyone bootstrap a "minimal" level of trust at the beginning before they can use time to prove themselves trustworthy. I've always thought that client certs would be an interesting solution to this problem. Any given certificate can carry signatures from multiple signing authorities, right? So we could imagine a world where there are many different certificate authorities, each of whom have their own criteria for signing a particular certificate and each of whom offer different varieties of assurance regarding the signature-holder's identity. From here, the question of "should I allow the user identified by this client cert to use my service" simply becomes a question of 1.) checking the validity of the signatures of the client cert and 2.) deciding if the CA's criteria for signing certs aligns with my desired userbase. For example, a particular CA might insist that their users go through some real-world process to renew their certification every few years, but when they sign a cert it means that the bearer has been strongly vetted as a real person. An interesting side effect of this auth model is that a service provider accepting certs from a particular CA has someone to complain to if a user bearing their signature acts improperly on their platform. You could imagine a CA which has a code of conduct expected of the users whose certs they sign, and would perhaps revoke a user's certification if too many websites complain.
- unwise-exe 4y ago
  That's not safe for a lot of sites, though. I hear that porn tends to be officially frowned on in a fair number of places. Reading non-approved news is dangerous in some places. Honestly debating political topics can be super dangerous if you're identifiable. Sometimes even having a login on a site is dangerous, I think I heard about this after a non-mainstream discussion site got hacked like a hear and a half ago.
Sebb767 4y ago
> Basically, the core problem is digital identities [...] are cheap to create [...] so fraud is easy. The solution could be just to make it "costly" to create new digital identities. We already use this model in practice. It's why so many services require a phone number verification now - they are hard enough to get en-masse, especially if you block things like Google Voice. They even have a big advantage in that they are comparatively hard to hack, as the SIM card is effectively a weak form of physical security key. I think the big problems this causes is discussed on HN quite often.

georgyo 4y ago

Your idea is comes from a good place, but identity theft is already a thing in the real world. Digital identities would also be very stealable. This malware more harmful in the long term. Imagine if your Twitter gets hacked and your digital identity makes it so your Gmail gets blocked. Similar, the internet is already very difficult for the people with limited means. This would make it even harder.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Easy solution. Go down to your local post office. They physically hand you an identity token on a physical $2 2fa device if you give some evidence you live nearby. You can put down the deposit or hand over the device for an old id which is cleared and reused. It's traceable to the post office but no further, nothing is recorded other than that the token is deployed and roughly when. Local communities can be responsible for cleaning up local messes. No need for the scammers two cities over to effect your reputation. No need for a corrupt employee handing out tokens to effect the reputation of the token you got ten years ago.
- georgyo 4y ago
  So every country in the world should simultaneously roll out this $2 2FA token? And the governments of the world are going to do this is an anonymous way? Who is going to manufacture these 8 billion (Or at least 3 billion if we only count Facebook's MAU) tokens? And there still needs to be a global database of valid identifiers, else anyone could just create a software token that they can reprogram ever second. And we expect all people to carry these 2FA tokens perfectly? And what happens when someone looses this token? The post office has way to prove you owned that token in your proposal. Same thing for revoking a token. There is no identity out of the token, so how do you revoke it after it is lost? People are not willing to store a piece of paper in a security deposit box. This "easy" solution is impossible in practice.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    You're projecting use cases that weren't proposed. The only purpose is to provide evidence of not being a bot. Not to log in or verify identity. You don't need a server or proof that a particular token is owned by a particular person, just a cert chain and a list of postcodes with current public keys. The post office has a private key. They sign a message saying 'the holder of this token walked into the store'. Let servers make whatever judgements they wish about the chain's credibility. If a particular key signs lots of bots then you know where to look for the source of the bot farm and the people that live there know where to look to fix their reputation. It doesn't need to roll out simultaneously. Just be an alternative to captcha that isn't as abusive as device attestation. The manufacturers will be the same ones that manufacture the hundreds of billions of usb drives and phones and smart light bulbs. The only problems are it's not as useful for abusing users or spying on citizens as revoking access to general purpose computing, and idiots who project problems onto it that come from use cases that are not proposed or say 'big number make thing impossible'.
jabbany 4y ago
It's not really my idea (has been proposed multiple times long ago to the point it has even been implemented in many places). As for identity theft, it's actually not that common/easy except in the US (which has no centralized national ID issuer and largely depends on hacks building on the SSN). An besides, protecting digital identity is already important even without this bootstrapping. > Imagine if your Twitter gets hacked and your digital identity makes it so your Gmail gets blocked. Flip the services around and you have the reality of today.

mhink 4y ago

> Basically, the core problem is digital identities (accounts, IPs, phone #s etc.) are cheap to create (even considering captchas and all) so fraud is easy. The solution could be just to make it "costly" to create new digital identities. For example, you could get a "verified but anonymous" identity issued by locking some assets (could be real world money, or maybe something intangible like community reputation) as collateral with a trusted party (or, for the crypto people, the blockchain). If you misbehave, you lose your reputation on that identity (and essentially your collateral) and have to start over. This lets anyone bootstrap a "minimal" level of trust at the beginning before they can use time to prove themselves trustworthy. I've always thought that client certs would be an interesting solution to this problem. Any given certificate can carry signatures from multiple signing authorities, right? So we could imagine a world where there are many different certificate authorities, each of whom have their own criteria for signing a particular certificate and each of whom offer different varieties of assurance regarding the signature-holder's identity. From here, the question of "should I allow the user identified by this client cert to use my service" simply becomes a question of 1.) checking the validity of the signatures of the client cert and 2.) deciding if the CA's criteria for signing certs aligns with my desired userbase. For example, a particular CA might insist that their users go through some real-world process to renew their certification every few years, but when they sign a cert it means that the bearer has been strongly vetted as a real person. An interesting side effect of this auth model is that a service provider accepting certs from a particular CA has someone to complain to if a user bearing their signature acts improperly on their platform. You could imagine a CA which has a code of conduct expected of the users whose certs they sign, and would perhaps revoke a user's certification if too many websites complain.

unwise-exe 4y ago
That's not safe for a lot of sites, though. I hear that porn tends to be officially frowned on in a fair number of places. Reading non-approved news is dangerous in some places. Honestly debating political topics can be super dangerous if you're identifiable. Sometimes even having a login on a site is dangerous, I think I heard about this after a non-mainstream discussion site got hacked like a hear and a half ago.

Sebb767 4y ago

> Basically, the core problem is digital identities [...] are cheap to create [...] so fraud is easy. The solution could be just to make it "costly" to create new digital identities. We already use this model in practice. It's why so many services require a phone number verification now - they are hard enough to get en-masse, especially if you block things like Google Voice. They even have a big advantage in that they are comparatively hard to hack, as the SIM card is effectively a weak form of physical security key. I think the big problems this causes is discussed on HN quite often.