Place and identity

Every common sign-in factor is tied to a person or to their device, and not one of them answers the question “is the person actually here?”. Place answers it. Why this matters and for whom is covered on the Place and identity page. Here is what it demands of the product.

​

What it builds on

The scenario needs no new protocol: a sign-in on the work computer gives identity, a QR code on site gives presence. Both steps are ordinary confirmation transactions, which Veriqa already knows how to run. A QR code can sit on several surfaces, and they are not equally hard:

​

What does not exist today

Neither a printer nor a screen is a Veriqa channel, and the reason is not a missing adapter. The channel model has no category of a “place channel” at all: every existing channel is tied to a person — Telegram, WhatsApp, other channels and Email answer “who”, not “where”. Such a category is a change to the channel model rather than one more adapter, and it is common to every surface in the table above.

​

Where its limits are

• Against a colleague in the same room the place factor does not protect at all — they are already inside. The factor is exactly as strong as the control over physical access.
• Printing adds risks of its own. A sheet outlives the session, it can be forgotten in a shared tray, and a personalized onboarding sheet is a long-lived linking secret that a short lifetime does not cure. Without one-time tokens and the invalidation of the remaining QR codes on first use, such a scenario is not safe.
• A QR code on a permanent screen is visible to everyone in the room and to cameras. It can therefore only ever be a marker of place and never a secret: short lifetime, rotation, and possession of it alone grants nothing.