Validating identity

With OIDC, they can also give you a token called an ID token.

The ID token contains information about a user and their authentication status.

A failure might be because the user entered the details incorrectly or the document has been revoked, reported lost or reported stolen.

The identity provider can then carry out further verification to see if the person is who they say they are.

We will be working with other government departments and agencies to expand the range of documents we can allow identity providers to validate.

If your client application requires authentication and would like to obtain information about the authenticated person, then it should use the Open ID Connect protocol to get an ID token.

They simply allow access to certain defined server resources.

This post is an introduction to the document checking service, part of GOV. If you're interested in the different documents and methods certified companies can use to verify you, you can read more in this post.

----- In previous posts we've explained how identity assurance works; a certified company (also known as an identity provider) will undertake a set of checks to establish to a defined level of confidence that it's really you.

We've built the document checking service so that identity providers can check digitally - immediately - to make sure the information provided by the user matches a valid record. UK Verify, because it means identity providers can complete all the necessary checks within the time it takes for a user to go through their verification process - about 10 minutes in total, on average.

It means people won't have to send things in the post or take their documents to a counter service.