Data Card
Australia to let people switch off their own identity documents
Australia announced IDLock, a myGov feature letting citizens block and unblock their own passports and driver licences against verification requests.
2026-08-31CC-BY-4.0idlockcredential-revocationmygovaustralia
About
Key Facts
- Holders can block and unblock credentials through myGov.
- The underlying Credential Protection Register has blocked more than 830,000 fraudulent verification attempts since 2022.
- Testing begins later in 2026 with national deployment planned for 2027.
Card Text
Treating a credential as something the holder can suspend borrows the freeze model from consumer credit and applies it to identity documents. It addresses the period after a data breach when a document is compromised but not yet reissued, which existing processes handle poorly.