Last updated 20 July 2026
Showing a driver licence to prove you are over 18 reveals far more than your age: your name, address, licence number and birth date, handed to a stranger. Your Identity Wallet can answer the same question while revealing none of that.
How it works, in plain terms
During verification, the network confirmed your date of birth from your identity document. That verified fact stays encrypted. When a service asks “is this person over 18?”, the network produces a zero-knowledge proof — a piece of cryptography that proves the statement “this verified person's age is at least 18” is true, without exposing the age itself or any document.
The service can check the proof is genuine and current. What it learns is exactly one bit of information: yes.
What the service sees
- The answer to the question it asked — for example, over 18: yes.
- That the answer is backed by a network-verified identity at your verification level.
- Nothing else. Not your birth date, not your name, not your document.
The same technique works for other threshold questions — proving your identity meets a required level, without revealing your verification history or score details.
Why this matters
Every document copy held by a venue, website or app is a breach waiting to happen. Proof-based sharing means there is nothing on file to steal: the service holds a yes/no answer that is useless to an identity thief.
What you need
Age proofs require Standard verification or higher, because the network must have verified your date of birth from a real document. See verification levels in the get-started guide for what each level requires.