How Much Identity Management with Blockchain Would Have Saved Us? A Longitudinal Study of Identity Theft

The use of blockchain for identity management (IdM) has been on the rise in the past decade. We present the first work to study the actual, large-scale impact of using blockchain for identity management, particularly how it can protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to curb identity theft and fraud. Our insight is that if blockchain-based IdM protects PII, it can reduce the number of theft and fraud cases that take advantage of such PII. At the Center for Identity at the University of Texas at Austin, we have modeled about 6,000 cases of identity theft, and PII exploited in them. We utilize this model to investigate how three real-world blockchain-based IdM solutions (Civic, ShoCard, and Authenteq) could have reduced the identity theft loss over the past 20 years if they had been universally used. We identify which PII protected by blockchain is more critical. We also suggest new PII to include in blockchain-based IdM. Our work paves the way for the design of more effective blockchain-based IdM or any other new line of IdM for that matter.

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