South Korea’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety has asked the country’s three mobile carriers to drop the word “ID” from the name of their PASS identity confirmation service and to change its screen design, so that users do not mistake it for the government-issued mobile ID, according to Financial News.
PASS is a smartphone app run by SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus. Its ID confirmation service displays the details of a user’s physical identity card on a phone, while the government’s mobile ID is a separate credential issued by the state. The service has 13.8 million users, according to the industry.
The request comes as the government reviews whether to abolish the PASS ID confirmation service altogether. The ministry met executives from the three carriers and the Korean National Police Agency last month to discuss how the PASS service should be revised. At the meeting, the ministry said the two services are different but have similar names and screens, which could lead users to treat them as the same ID. It asked the carriers to stop using the term “ID” in the PASS service name and to consider interface changes that make the services easier to tell apart.
The carriers already renamed the service once this year. Between June and August, at the ministry’s request, they changed “PASS Mobile ID” to “PASS ID.” An industry official said another name change could add to confusion among the service’s 13 million-plus users, and carriers are concerned that dropping “ID” would make the service’s purpose harder to convey.
The interface discussion also covered QR code verification. Businesses that need to check identification, such as bars and convenience stores, often look at the screen instead of scanning the QR code, and the ministry suggested redesigning the PASS app so that identity confirmation is only completed once the code has been scanned. The ministry is also reportedly considering rules that would allow penalties for distributing or promoting apps that generate fake ID screens, not only for using them.
The talks follow ministry data, released by a National Assembly member this week, showing that complaints about refused or unusable mobile IDs rose 22-fold in three years. That data also showed that the tools for verifying mobile IDs vary by service, with the police-run driver’s license confirmation service checkable only through PASS.
The ministry plans to decide how the PASS ID confirmation service should be improved based on the results of a research study due at the end of the year.
Sources: Financial News
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
