Just as we are plagued by data breaches because of our reliance on secrecy as our model of trust assertion instead of just-in-time information verification, we are similarly plagued by scams related to our inability to verify unknown contacts. Calls, text messages, emails, etc from unknown sources are now a major source of scams, cyber extortion and such. As was demonstrated here , Certisfy stickers backed by cryptographic certificate signatures can address this type of trust problem too. If for instance your doctor's office or other place of business that you have a legitimate business relationship with calls you, they can simply begin the message with a sticker code such as below. You can put that sticker code in the Certisfy app and verify the identity and related information, including for the contact source identifier (phone number, email address...etc). If a message doesn't start with a verifiable sticker code, you drop it immediately, this effectively kills all such s
We continue to be plagued by data breaches, password and credit card dumps, healthcare records...etc. One of the reasons many of these breaches continue to be devastating and effective for cyber criminals is because our current information use infrastructure/architecture relies on secrecy as the primary mode for preventing the misuse of information. Secrecy simply means only the people who have the right to use a bit of information have access to it, when that assumption breaks down as it does with data breaches, the related information can lose some or all its value. For instance a compromised credit/debit card number means getting a new number. A compromised password database means changing the passwords...etc Secrecy has its use as a privacy preserving mechanism but is fairly flawed as an information usage authentication mechanism. The idea of secrecy as the mechanism for controlling the use of information is deeply ingrained, so much so that even people who should know better often