A blind credential is a token asserting that someone qualifies under some criteria or has some status or right, without revealing "who" that person is — without including their name or address, for instance. It is used in maintaining medical privacy and increasingly for consumer privacy. The main subject of medical privacy is the medical record which historically has been a paper file of the entire medical history of the patient. ... This article or section should be merged with Customer privacy Consumer privacy laws and regulations seek to protect any individual from loss of privacy due to failures or limitations of corporate customer privacy meausures. ...
It can be quite difficult to ascertain that someone is not using another's credential — identity theft — therefore a great deal of effort goes into the application of cryptography to authentication. Identity theft is the deliberate assumption of another persons identity, usually to gain access to their finances or frame them for a crime. ... See also: Topics in cryptography The security of all practical encryption schemes remains unproven, both for symmetric and asymmetric schemes. ... In computer security, authentication (Greek: αυθεντικός, from authentes=author) is the process by which a computer, computer program, or another user attempts to confirm that the computer, computer program, or user from whom the second party has received some communication is, or is not, the claimed first party. ...
Electronic money requires some blind credential system to assert that the money is valid, and has not been already spent, and belongs to the individual or entity that is spending it. Electronic money (or digital money) refers to cash and associated transactions implemented using electronic means. ...
It is usually not wise to consider a blind credential outside of the Public Key Infrastructure of electronic identity guarantees required to support it. In cryptography, a public key infrastructure (PKI) is an arrangement which provides for third-party vetting of, and vouching for, user identities. ...
In foreign diplomacy, credentials are documents which ambassadors, diplomatic ministers, plenipotentiary, and charges d'affaires hand to the government to which they are accredited, for the purpose, chiefly, of communicating to the latter the envoys diplomatic rank.
The credentials of an ambassador or minister plenipotentiary are signed by the chief of state, those of a charges d'affaires by the foreign minister.
The study of credentials in cryptography is concerned with the way that someone can claim a credential without presenting physical documents or being physically recognized, that is, separating the credential from the body.