Identification has always been a priority for modern society — a way to instill trust in others that a person is who they say they are. Today, IDs are used for everything from applying for a library card to preventing financial fraud. Without them, personal accountability, security, and authenticity can become lost.
With more aspects of individuals’ lives going online, digital identification has emerged as a necessity for verifying someone’s identity. What started as entering a simple password has evolved into facial and fingerprint recognition. Today, these methods have progressed even further into complex identification systems like advanced biometrics.
To keep you up to date with the latest trends, Spokeo covers what you need to know in the digital ID space in 2026, including the death of passwords and the rise of decentralized identification.
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1. Goodbye passwords, hello passkeys
The days of password books and locked-out accounts are over. Passkeys are a way to access all of your accounts with a single tap. They are a standard-based technology that relies on WebAuthn to verify authentication.
As described by Apple, they work through public key cryptography. This is a form of encryption in which a public key is stored server-side and a private key is stored device-side. When these two keys come together, they “unlock” the account. There are several benefits to this technology over regular passwords, including convenience for the user and resistance to common cybersecurity attacks like brute-force.
The acceptance of passkeys is growing. A 2025 study by the FIDO Alliance found that 75% of survey respondents are now aware of passkeys, with 53% believing they offer greater security and 54% believing they offer greater convenience. Respondents were sourced from three million survey takers on SurveyMonkey. Data was weighted for age, sex, education, and geography.
2. Mobile driver’s licenses and digital wallets
Driver’s licenses have often been the gold standard of identification and are used for verification in a range of industries. There is now a shift towards mobile driver’s licenses, stored in digital wallets on smartphones. Nineteen states and Puerto Rico are now participating in mobile driver’s license programs, although physical IDs are still required when traveling.
The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence is currently collaborating with these states to roll out pilot programs for mDLs in the financial sector. This will make it easier for consumers to comply with authentication requests.
3. Behavioral biometrics might know you better than you know yourself
Once the stuff of sci-fi films, biometrics have found their way into people’s everyday lives. In 2026, these biometrics are advancing beyond simple facial recognition and fingerprints. They’re now analyzing unique, personal behavior in a new form called behavioral biometrics.
In the physical world, behavioral biometrics are used by law enforcement to create identity profiles based on observed characteristics like gait. Most behavioral biometrics, however, are used in the digital world. They analyze unique traits like mouse movement, typing speed, and IP addresses to create an easily-verified identity.
According to the Biometrics Institute, applications are adopting this form of digital identification where ongoing ID verification is necessary, such as in online banking sessions.
4. Deepfake defense is becoming urgent
In a June 2024 study by The Alan Turing Institute, researchers found that 90% of people are concerned about deepfakes. While most concern was about misinformation and online content, biometric identity verification is also an increasing worry. In November 2024, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an alert of fraud schemes using AI and deepfakes to circumvent identity verification in financial institutions.
To combat this, many technology companies are creating deepfake defense software. Solutions like McAfee’s Deepfake Detector utilize “transformer-based deep neural network models” to spot patterns in the audio of a video that suggest it is created or altered by AI. The FIDO Alliance has also created a certification program for biometric devices, creating a new standard for identity verification companies to implement deepfake detection into their systems.
5. Securing digital IDs with decentralized networks
One main issue with digital identification credentials is that they’re stored in one place. For example, using an Apple Wallet to store an mDL means that all of the information that’s on this license is kept in Apple’s servers. With sensitive data breaches becoming more common, consumers and technologists are concerned about how accessible identity data is to attackers.
To resolve this issue, decentralized identity networks are growing in popularity. Dimension Market Research expects the DID industry to grow at an 81.2% annual rate, reaching a value of $103.3 billion by 2035.
With DID, identity and access management is spread across multiple environments. Okta explains how, by using blockchain technology, users can provide credential keys from their digital wallets to a verifier, who then confirms the identity claims via cryptography. The benefit is that no single third-party has access to all identity information for an individual. The individual can decide what and with whom they’d like to share their credentials.
Decentralized identity is one of the three core pillars in the self-sovereign identity model, which is based on giving individuals full control and democracy over their identity data.
The future of IDs: Secure, digital infrastructure
Identity verification is not going anywhere, but the way it’s achieved certainly is. There has never been a greater need for digital ID solutions that are as secure as they are convenient. Technologies like passkeys, mDLs, behavioral biometrics, deepfake defense, and DID are leading this charge.
In the end, the adoption of these emerging technologies ensures that identities can be accurately digitally verified and that people’s private information is kept out of the wrong hands. Through constant technological progress and innovation, digital ID verification is becoming more secure and more user-friendly than ever before.
This story was produced by Spokeo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.