Yorick Last, Paderborn University; Hanna Schraffenberger, Daniel Ostkamp, and Jorrit Geels, Radboud University; Patricia Arias Cabarcos, European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC)
When signing digital documents, users often insert scanned or digitized handwritten signatures, which provide no assurance of a document’s authenticity and integrity. Cryptographic signatures offer such guarantees, but are rarely adopted due to persistent usability challenges. This paper explores the potential of digital identity wallets for securely and intuitively signing documents with verified personal data. To this end, we developed IdentitySign, an open-source prototype application, and evaluated it through a user study (N=74). Our results indicate good usability but also reveal potential pitfalls for this and similar wallet-based signature applications, such as unjustified trust in documents with signatures that are cryptographically valid but signed by the wrong signer. We provide guidelines and insights for creating user-centric, secure, and trustworthy digital signage applications using identity wallets.
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author = {Yorick Last and Hanna Schraffenberger and Daniel Ostkamp and Jorrit Geels and Patricia Arias Cabarcos},
title = {{IdentitySign}: Design and User Study of a Prototype Application for Digitally Signing Documents Using an Identity Wallet},
booktitle = {Twenty-Second Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2026)},
year = {2026},
isbn = {978-1-939133-59-5},
pages = {487--505},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2026/presentation/last},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}
