The federal government has replaced the replace the ageing NIN paper slip and polycarbonate card with a suite of digital Tokens.
This was revealed by Isa Pantami, the minister of communications and digital economy, at a stakeholders workshop on the ‘NIN Tokenization Solution’ organised by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) on Wednesday in Abuja.
According to him, the virtual NIN is a tokenised version of a person’s actual NIN, which another party verifying the number can’t hold and use it in a way that puts the individual’s data privacy at risk.
It expires 72 hours in the wake of being generated.
Nigerians can utilize the virtual NIN while checking their identity with an agent or enterprise that needs to confirm their identity prior to offering them a service (banks, airports, shopping delivery, among others).
Pantami said;
“The Federal Government has adopted the solution to ensure the privacy of personally identifiable information of individuals during verification transactions and to reduce incidences of illegal retrieval, usage, transfer, and storage of NIN. Full implementation commences 1st January 2022.”
Represented at the event by Aliyu Aziz, NIMC director-general, Pantami explained;
“The NIN Tokenization solution is a feature of the NIN Verification Service (NVS) which is aimed at providing enhanced data protection for the personal information of persons registered into the National Identity Database (NIDB) and issued a NIN.”
“The resources for the protection of this sensitive data includes the Improved NIN Slip, USerID, MobileID, NIN hashing and the issuance of a unique virtual NIN by the ID holder to anyone who wishes to verify their identity.
“The purpose of the NIN Tokenization is to provide a coded representation (“pseudonymization”) of the actual NIN for which another party verifying the identity of the registered person cannot retain and use in a way that puts the individual’s data privacy at risk.
“Depending on the use cases, this may be via the hash contained in the Improved NIN Slip, the 2 varying hashes contained in the MobileID application, the UserID (which is available instantly to anyone issued a NIN, irrespective of whether they have a device or not), and of course, the one-time use Virtual NIN token.”
Going further, Pantami said virtual NIN tokens are merchant-specific and expire after a set period of time. This implies that a token generated for company A cannot be used or verified by company B.
To get the virtual NIN, a person must have a NIN issued by NIMC, a mobile number registered in Nigeria and linked to your NIN.
It can be generated via the MWS: NIMC MobileID app or via USSD (*346*3*YourNIN*AgentCode#).
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