Phones are a cache. As noted above, you just get a new one and reload your data. What makes a phone better than your wallet is that phones can be remotely tracked, wiped or disabled, and become very hard to make use of or sell. They are much less useful than stealing a wallet. Modern phones are very hard to near impossible to crack. As far as accessible security available to ordinary mortals, phones are better than just about anything else you can get.
If you have policemen that will take your phone you have a lot more problems than worrying about your driver’s licence. The same policeman might be not so inclined to return your wallet.
No. The ID apps can’t be copied. The license is keyed to the phone. Where I live the license app is very secure. They provide a mechanism for validation by another phone. The displayed QR code is only valid for a few tens of seconds. Then the phone has to get a new validation code from a central server. The validating phone checks that the validation code is current. Otherwise the license won’t validate. No reason why equivalent mechanisms wont be used anywhere.
Compared to a physical wallet a smart phone with correctly designed ID apps is a gigantic leap ahead in terms of utility and security.
Of course there is nothing stopping your local government authorities using a broken insecure app, or you deciding that passcodes, fingerprint, or face scans are for idiots and not protecting your phone. There is only so much that technology can do.
I would be concerned about handing my unlocked phone to a police officer and anyone else. But an officer more so, what is to keep them from searching your phone once they find out you have an unpaid fine or a unknown warrant? You freely handed it them and implied check my information.
I carry only my DL, one CC, a little cash and my concealed carry permit. The last is required to carry in my state even if you are not carrying. If I get hit by a car I’d like some info on me, not just my phone. If I get robbed I’d like to offer them something.
Under the protocols that are currently being tested, you wouldn’t have to hand over your unlocked phone to the officer; you merely display the screen with the QR code. The officer can scan this code for verification without having to even touch your phone. Of course there’s not much you can do if the officer decides to unlawfully wrestle the phone out of your hand anyway; but then the problem is not one of digital IDs specifically but rather one of police exceeding their authority.
If your phone was still working and your fingers weren’t mangled, just saying. I like having a backup plan in cases like this. I don’t go so far as to always have clean underwear on.
That is exactly where I am. I almost never need them but they are there to cover very occasional technical glitches. I think I needed the credit card once in the last two years with a parking ticket machine that didn’t do NFC. Drivers license for picking up packages from a post office. Neither are as secure as the electronic versions.
However the ultimate security of being able to identify yourself and be able to cover emergency expenses without any technology is not going to be beaten anytime soon. Same for international travel. Passport and credit card can get you out of trouble. A couple of hundred in folding money, (when travelling either US dollars or Euros) in addition makes life easier. Post COVID cash is going to be almost entirely emergency use. But I wouldn’t be without it.
Doubtless it’s changed but in 2007 we went on a tour of Guatemala and the day before we went to Tikal we were warned to take cash as their telephone line for credit cards sometimes went down. Even at Disney World sometimes the credit card/Magic Bands machine goes down.
If the chip reader machines are compatible with NFC almost all the work is done for them if they want. Near off the shelf solutions exist to put the card on an app.
Here in Oz the national Medicare card is available in an app. Same app also ties into our other government info and if one wants, health records. The system is opt-in, but works reasonably well. The only time one needs the card is when visiting a new health provider. Once in their system it isn’t needed again.
Private health cover card does need to be used each time, but is available as an app.
There isn’t. It’s just about the realisation that the physical cards and licences don’t matter. What matters is the incorporeal information about you that they embody. This information can just as well, and possibly better, be carried by a phone.
Paper airline tickets have already undergone the same development. They used to be ubiquitous until, IIRC, the early 2000s. Then people realised that there is no need for the passenger to present a hard copy of the ticket at all, and that it was sufficient for travellers to have a booking that the airline can look up on a computer.
Having a friend with a bulging “Costanza Wallet” has been a good bad example for me. So I made myself ditch the wallet, started keeping a few bills in my front pocket, and just needed to carry ONE credit card, my ATM card, and my license.
I kept a lookout for a skinny ‘card case’ that was minimal even before cards were added. That gave me room for some emergency items: a blank check, insurance card, and a $20 bill (had to be enough for a large coffee and a scone… yes, that’d be an emergency).
If you’re going to travel light, you need to be tough with yourself: one credit card (and NO “Hyper-Platinum Royalty Card” from your hardware store, seriously, my friend has dozens of those, which saves him less than a half a buck a month)…
And everything you can, you put on your phone. My drug store and gym membership cards scan just fine from a photo on my phone.
I like having a backup plan in cases like this. I don’t go so far as to always have clean underwear on.