Governments around the world, especially in Europe, are currently enforcing age verification for social media and other online platforms, in the name of protecting minors. The idea is commendable, but the way it is being done requires users to provide identification to a “trusted” third party and, above all, to link their real identity to their online identity, which completely undermines privacy. We have witnessed enough leaks lately to know that this data will eventually leak if it is stored.

Proton could develop an age verification (or more generally, identity verification) application that could be used on social networks (or on Discord, to take something that is currently in the news) and allow users to prove the requested information (in this case, age, to use my example) without having to reveal their identity. The ideal solution would be an application with an on-device process, zero-knowledge proofs, double anonymity, and, if possible, open source. Without a database, there would be nothing to hack or leak.

Proton has the expertise for this type of application and also the trust of its community. Even a partial implementation of the above requests would already be a big step forward compared to what is currently available on the market.