Your digital backpack
Share what each job needs. Keep the rest.

Please fill in this form. Again.
Name. Address. Date of birth. Passport number. Every new service asks the same questions. The digital backpack is a simple fix: keep your useful details ready, and choose what to share each time.
A backpack with pockets.
Ribbit’s Identity Letter describes personal details you could reuse across services. Community researcher Altcoinist called it a digital backpack. Picture four pockets: who you are, what you like, your tickets and receipts, and your instructions about what your helper may do.
The hotel only needs your names and arrival date. It does not need your whole life. And knowing your address never means permission to order furniture.
Your backpack has separate compartments.
- 01 / Identity
Who you are.
Only the identity information this service needs, with a clear recipient and purpose.
- 02 / Memory
What makes a result useful.
Your preferences and history can help the agent avoid asking the same questions again.
- 03 / Credentials
What you can demonstrate.
A checked fact about you can answer a particular question without sharing your whole personal file.
- 04 / Permission
What may happen next.
Choose which jobs the helper may do, for how long and how much it may spend.
Some pieces already exist.
Persona, a company that checks identities for businesses, offers ways to reuse a check you have already passed. OpenAI’s Finances in ChatGPT can use connected accounts to answer money questions for eligible US users, but it cannot move money. Understanding you and acting for you are two separate steps.
One rule matters most: you can switch access off. But once a business has a copy of your details, switching off cannot pull that copy back. So a good helper shares only what each job needs.