Telegram introduced its own Passport service to verify and authorize users.

The team of Pavel Durov officially presented to the public its own service of verification and secure authorization on third-party resources called Telegram Passport. The corresponding entry was posted on the official blog of the Telegram messenger. Access to the service from third-party platforms has already received the resource ePayments.com , in the future a significant expansion of this list is expected.

Telegram Passport is a unified authorization method for services that require personal user identification. Download your documents only once in order to have a permanent opportunity to use services that require real identification data (financial instruments, ICO, and others).

To identify the accepted not only classical data as name, phone number, and scan / photo passports, but also driver's licenses, ID-card, data on registration, information about temporary registration. In addition, the system takes selfies with documents to confirm that the identification is a real person, and not an attacker who seized the personal data of the user.

The first mentions of the service were related to the TON project, which, during a closed ICO, collected up to $ 2 billion, according to various data. Then, after the appearance of an insider from the journalist Vedomosti, who got access to the private functions of Telegram, it became known that the messenger team development of a universal method for the identification and authorization of users. The service was named Telegram Passport and was intended both for use within the ecosystem of Telegram itself and TON, and to gain access to the functions of third-party services. In May 2018, Telegram Passport was in the process of closed testing, and all information regarding the development was provided in the form of anonymous comments from people “familiar with the developers”.

Earlier it was planned that Telegram Passport will be based on the blockchain technology and directly connected to the Telegram Open Network (TON). However, the current release reports that the main way to protect personal data is end-to-end encryption, and there is no mention of TON or storing information in the blockchain in the release.

Now the vast majority of financial services on the network require full user identification to unlock the function of withdrawing funds and removing a number of hard limits on deposit and deposit. This is true both for classic systems, such as Webmoney or Yandex.deg, and for services that are less popular in our latitudes.

In addition, one of the potential uses of Telegram Passport, which was announced back in May, is the KYC procedure for ICO projects. Now KYC is one of the most complicated operations for any tokensail (after fundraising, of course), and decentralization, multiple exchanges and methods of depositing / withdrawing funds do not simplify the situation. Telegram Passport was declared as a tool that allows users to be identified in one click, loading all of its data to the target resource (full name, scans of documents, information about residence, telephone) from closed Telegram servers in encrypted form.

It is important to note that developers understand the risk of connecting to their system through an API.everyone, therefore, in the future, for less reliable and popular services on the network (for example, for the same ICO), the function of confirming the status of the user will be introduced without transferring his personal data . In fact, it will be a response of the form "The user is identified and is who he claims to be, but you don’t need to know any more." Thus, the Telegram team further assumes the obligations of the classic guarantor, without transferring and distributing the personal data of users to third parties.

This system is extremely competitive and in demand, as the peculiarities of work in different regions require the identification of users in the system as part of the fight against fraudsters, carders and other intruders. Until now, there was no unified certification system, which made life difficult for people who actively use cryptocurrency and electronic money. At the same time, we must not forget that passing certification is not only a waste of time and sometimes money (as in the case of Webmoney or foreigners in the Yandex.Money system), but also a matter of trust in the service. Often, the reason for the refusal to use the exchanger or the transfer system is not the fact that they need to be identified there, but that the person does not fully understand who exactly is transmitting their data.

Creating a system that will allow instant identification in one click without “distributing” your personal data to the left and right for everyone will significantly improve the digital and cryptoeconomics.

The Telegram developers assure that all data will be downloaded to the company's closed servers in an encrypted form, and the user password will provide an additional degree of protection, that is, employees will not have access to the data. The transfer of personal data to third parties will be made only with the explicit consent and permission of the user.

Such a development of Telegram, no less, declared itself as a new global identification center for the Network. Adherents of decentralization and anonymity will not like this position a little, but for average users the Telegram Passport-level service can be just as useful as the button “Sign in with Gmail”, once created by Google. The whole question is how many popular services will be connected via Telegram Passport API in the future and whether the service will become truly massive.