This app from Harvard could reshape how identity works beyond Google Wallet

• A Harvard-backed project called Keyring aims to keep your identity on your device rather than scattered across company servers, reducing the amount of personal data you have to hand over online.
• It only shares the minimum required information for verification, like confirming your age without revealing your full date of birth, with authentication handled locally via biometrics.
• Unlike platforms like Google Wallet, Keyring removes big tech from the process entirely, offering a more decentralized and user-controlled approach to digital identity.

Let’s not pretend this hasn’t gotten out of hand — signing in online now comes with a trade-off. It has turned into a steady stream of data sharing, where every app wants an account and every site nudges you toward that one-tap “Continue with Google” convenience. It works, but it also means your personal information is duplicated, stored, and shared across more places than you can realistically keep track of. That is exactly what researchers are increasingly pushing back against.

A recent report (via The Harvard Gazette) examines how companies collect, store, and use personal data. In many cases, it leaves users exposed to privacy risks and, at the extreme end, identity theft. None of this is new, but the sheer scale of it today is getting harder to shrug off. In response, researchers at Harvard University have teamed up with the Linux Foundation’s Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group to rethink how online identity works. Their answer is Keyring Wallet, a project built on a simple idea: your identity should stay with you, not sit on a company’s servers.