Biometric Bound Credentials for Age Verification

2025-09-09

AI Summary

Online age verification suffers from low accuracy, high intrusiveness, privacy leakage, and credential sharing. This paper proposes Biometric-Bound Credentials (BBCreds), a cryptographic age-verification mechanism that avoids storing raw biometric templates. BBCreds dynamically binds verifiable age claims to users’ live biometric traits via zero-knowledge proofs and biometric encryption, enforcing strict “self-only, on-site-only, service-authorized-only” access control. The scheme enables decentralized verification, eliminating credential resale and identity impersonation while simultaneously ensuring privacy preservation, collusion resistance, and auditability. To the best of our knowledge, BBCreds is the first system design achieving verifiable, share-resistant, and anonymous age credentials without persisting biometric templates.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Bias, Fairness & Privacy
• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User privacy protection in personalized systems
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Age verification is increasingly critical for regulatory compliance, user trust, and the protection of minors online. Historically, solutions have struggled with poor accuracy, intrusiveness, and significant security risks. More recently, concerns have shifted toward privacy, surveillance, fairness, and the need for transparent, trustworthy systems. In this paper, we propose Biometric Bound Credentials (BBCreds) as a privacy-preserving approach that cryptographically binds age credentials to an individual's biometric features without storing biometric templates. This ensures only the legitimate, physically present user can access age-restricted services, prevents credential sharing, and addresses both legacy and emerging challenges in age verification. enhances privacy.

Problem

• Enhancing privacy-preserving age verification systems
• Preventing credential sharing and unauthorized access
• Addressing accuracy, intrusiveness, and security risks

Innovation

• Cryptographically binds age credentials to biometrics
• Avoids storing biometric templates for privacy
• Ensures only legitimate present user access