Addressing the Privacy by Use Challenges in Verifiable Credential based Digital Wallets

The concept of Verifiable Credentials (VC) has emerged as a viable alternative to federated identity systems and can offer greater levels of control and ownership to users over their Digital Identity. However, the inability of users to make optimal decisions in relation to the use of VC results in privacy risks. To address this gap in VC technology, we present game-theoretic models for optimising the privacy of users and simultaneously ensuring minimum disclosure of PII in line with privacy safeguards around CDR and GDPR expectations around anonymity and unlinkability and demonstrate these properties through a digital credential wallet (DCW). The developed technology will deliver a novel DCW which embeds decision-making ability to quantify, benchmark and recommend the optimal usage of credentials that are held within the DCW.