Selective Disclosure: The power to share just enough

Think about the last time you had to prove something about yourself. Maybe you wanted to confirm your age to enter a venue or prove you have a valid driver’s license to rent a car. Chances are, you handed over your entire ID, revealing way more than necessary, like your full name, address, or ID number.

Imagining being able to share just the information that’s relevant for the moment, and nothing more. Need to confirm your date of birth without sharing your full ID? Or show you're part of a company to access a certain building or employee discount without disclosing your job title? That’s exactly the power of Selective Disclosure.

Selective Disclosure is the concept of revealing only the specific information a person wants to share – nothing more, nothing less.

It’s a privacy principle where only the necessary data is shared. While not a technology in itself, it shapes the design of privacy-enhancing technologies across many areas, from digital identity to finance, healthcare, and education. In practice, that means it can be built into apps and platforms to help people share just what’s needed, while keeping everything else private.

Let’s say you’re buying a beer at the grocery store and need to prove you’re over 21.

Typically, you’d hand over your driver’s license, which doesn’t just confirm your age, but also shares your name, address, and other personal details. That’s a lot of unnecessary data exposure for a simple check. The more that’s shared, the greater the risk, especially if that data is copied, scanned, or ends up in the wrong hands.

Selective Disclosure changes that. With it, you can prove you meet the age requirement without revealing anything else. The system simply verifies that you’re over 21 and lets the transaction go through. No name, no address, no extras.

A closer look at how Selective Disclosure works in the real world:

• Issuing the credentials: A trusted institution (issuer) issues a digital credential to a person. This credential can include multiple details such as name, date of birth, address, and more.

• Choosing what to share: When a person (holder) is asked to prove something, like his or her age, that person gets to pick which piece of info to share. So at the grocery store (verifier), you only reveal your date of birth. That’s it.

• Trust with privacy: Cryptographic proofs make sure the information is valid and comes from a trusted issuer (like government agency, university, or bank). The verifier can trust what’s being shown, without seeing all of the holder’s data.

So in essence, Selective Disclosure is about presenting information in a way where a person only discloses one thing. People stay in control of their own information and share only what’s necessary.

In a world where privacy and data security are getting more important, over-sharing data is risky. The more personal data people hand out, like their full name, address or ID number, the greater the chance it can be misused. From identity theft to data leaks, even small bits of unnecessary information can be exploited if they fall into the wrong hands.

Selective Disclosure flips that model by keeping people’s data safe, their privacy intact, and puts them in control. This simple yet powerful concept is set to change the way we verify identity and share personal information, making privacy the default, not the exception.

Selective Disclosure: A person shares only the necessary pieces of information about their identity (such as the birthdate), while keeping other personal details private.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs): Instead of revealing the actual information (like a birthdate), a person provides proof that a statement is true (for example, “yes, I am over 21”) without revealing any additional information (like the actual birthdate). The system simply verifies the yes/no answer.

Selective Disclosure is useful across a wide range of sectors. Let's look at a few real-world scenarios where it’s changing how information is shared.

Digital identity verification: Instead of revealing full identity details, individuals can share specific information, such as being over 21 or residing in a particular country, without disclosing their full birthdate or address.

Finance and banking: Financial institutions can assess income levels or creditworthiness without accessing a customer’s entire financial history.

Healthcare: Medical professionals can receive only the relevant parts of a patient’s medical history for a specific treatment or consultation.

Education: When students or graduates apply for jobs or further education, only the necessary qualifications, such as a degree or certification, can be disclosed, without revealing full transcripts or other unrelated details.

Government services: Governments can verify eligibility for services or benefits by requesting only the required information, reducing the risk of collecting or storing unnecessary personal data.

Human Resources (HR): During hiring processes, employers can verify specific credentials, like degrees, without accessing a full academic history, improving data handling practices.

Data minimization: Selective Disclosure allows parties to share only the information that is strictly necessary. This aligns with the principle of data minimization, reducing the amount of data exchanged in any transaction, which in turn lowers the risk of unnecessary data exposure.

Regulatory compliance: By limiting the amount of personal data shared, organizations align more closely with privacy regulations like GDPR, which emphasizes data minimization and purpose limitation..

Individual control over personal data: Selective Disclosure enables individuals to choose exactly which information to share in a given context, putting them in control of their own data.

Increased trust between organizations and users: When companies handle personal data responsibly, only requesting what's needed, it builds trust. Demonstrating a commitment to privacy not only protects customers but also helps build the organization’s reputation and customer loyalty.

Greater privacy protection: By revealing only the essential information and keeping the rest private, individuals reduce the chances of their data being misused, leaked, or exploited in ways they didn’t consent to.

At Partisia, we believe data privacy should be built in by design. That’s why Selective Disclosure is a core principle in the way we approach digital identity solutions. 

Every time someone shares a personal document, they often reveal more than they need to. We want to change that. Our approach reinforces individual ownership of personal data, and with Selective Disclosure, users can choose exactly what to share in a given context.

We're contributing to the development of a decentralized identity (DID) ecosystem with verifiers, issuers, and holders. Our focus is on helping organizations fulfill the issuer role, enabling them to create secure, privacy-preserving credentials.

By enabling smarter, more responsible data sharing, we help organizations take both data security and customer trust to the next level. Companies that empower users with control over their own information not only protect privacy, they also build stronger reputations and deeper digital trust.

From real-world use cases to industry updates and expert insights, our newsletter keeps you informed on the future of data privacy, cyber security, and decentralized solutions.