We already use our telephones to pay for coffees and eating places, and now we’ve yet one more new means to make use of our telephones – to confirm our id with the intention to fly. On Wednesday, Apple stated its customers can now digitize their passport or eligible driver’s license info of their Apple Wallets.
As a part of its new Digital ID function that the tech big launched in early November, your digitized journey info can be accepted by the Transportation Safety Administration for home flights in choose airports. Apple joins Google, which already permits individuals to retailer their passports of their cellphone’s pockets.
It’s the newest instance of how utilizing your cellphone to entry on a regular basis necessities is changing into mainstream. You’ll be able to already add a driver’s license or state ID in some states by taking part cellular apps or by way of Google Pockets in at least 11 states. Now, you may as well add your state ID to your Apple cellular machine for residents in a complete of 12 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio and West Virginia — in addition to Puerto Rico.
Right here’s how digitizing your passport in your cellphone works. If in case you have an iPhone, you scan the picture web page of your bodily passport, together with the safety chip on the again of your passport, and you’re taking a selfie. Then you definitely do some face and head actions through the setup course of. When you’re verified, your ID is added to your Apple Pockets. Equally, if in case you have an Android cellphone, you scan the picture web page of your passport and the safety chip on the again, together with a face scan. Google stated its id verification ought to simply take a couple of minutes.
However simply because you are able to do this simply, must you? Safety specialists weighed in on the professionals and cons of importing digital IDs like passports onto your cellphone for journey.
It’s Handy For Folks Who Neglect IDs
TSA says that “greater than 250 TSA checkpoints” take part on this service. However don’t wager in your airport having this service and simply depart your bodily ID at residence.
It’s additionally essential to recollect the bounds of this service: You can’t use it to fly overseas. TSA itself states, “Vacationers ought to at all times carry a bodily and acceptable type of ID.”
“No less than to journey internationally, you continue to must convey an actual passport anyway,” stated David Huerta, senior digital safety coach at Freedom of the Press Basis. “That’s the one motive I must convey a passport, so it’s sort of pointless in my thoughts.”
There Are Additionally Privateness Issues, Consultants Say
Illustration: HuffPost; Pictures: Getty
The possibilities of having your cellphone searched by a border agent on the airport have considerably elevated beneath Donald Trump’s administration. In 2025, Customs and Border Safety said it searched greater than 14,000 gadgets from April by June, which is almost a 17% spike over the previous three-month high in 2022. If you wish to be safer whereas touring, you may need to preserve your whole electronics turned off and never depend on a digital ID, Huerta stated.
“I feel having that bodily documentation will be the higher strategy to go” throughout a TSA checkpoint, Huerta stated. This fashion, it’s more durable for a border agent to unlock your cellphone with out your permission.
There may be additionally the potential of an iOS or Android knowledge breach that might compromise your cellular passport info. Huerta stated this danger is “most likely fairly low,” however on the identical time, “If I had to do that, I might most likely wait one other 12 months and simply see what occurs” earlier than being an early adopter of this know-how, he stated.
And on high of fast privateness points, the growth of digital ID companies does improve the demand for verification sooner or later. On its web site, Apple envisions a world the place you should utilize this digital ID for extra than simply verifying id for flights.
“Sooner or later, customers will be capable to current their digital ID at further choose companies and organizations for id and age verification in particular person, in apps, and on-line,” Apple states.
A future during which we want digital IDs to entry the world on-line could be an issue, privateness specialists say. “This [statement from Apple] presents scope creep as comfort and overshadows how vastly completely different the web could be if web sites and apps have been empowered to ask for ID,” stated Alexis Hancock, director of engineering at digital rights group Digital Frontier Basis. “I can’t advocate utilization on-line till regulators solidify protections and privateness for individuals who might use it in that context.“
Importing digital IDs for age verification necessities is now changing into extra frequent throughout the web for adult websites, search engines and even on a regular basis video games like Roblox.
“The sort of governments that determine what’s and isn’t age-gated goes to be depending on who’s in workplace at any given level,” stated Thorin Klosowski, a safety and privateness activist for the Digital Frontier Basis. “Perhaps at one level it’s Roblox, however possibly at one other level it’s sure kinds of spiritual info or well being info …You’ll be able to form of see the place [an age verification requirement] simply begins changing into problematic fairly shortly.“
That’s why including your passport to your cellphone is a handy however not impartial selection. Once you add your digital ID to your cellphone’s pockets, it’s best to realize it might introduce privateness dangers sooner or later.
