MitID

Edit: after finally taking my photo outdoors, against a neutral wall, on a cloudy day without direct sunshine, I was finally able to maybe pass the face scanning (no error that there wasn’t a match). However I now get an error that I had taken *too long* to complete the authorization and I needed to start again for security reasons. It takes me less than 2 minutes the complete the flow, after practicing literally dozens of times I guarantee that there are few people in the world that take *less time* than I do. The passport scanning and NFC functions of the MitID creation flow work very consistently - I know because I have used them dozens of times over multiple hours, having to repeat them over and over because the face scanning simply doesn’t work. I have a brand new passport, with a photo taken only one month ago. I also have a Danish ID with a photo taken one year ago. The app cannot recognize my face to either of these photos. I have tried all the recommendations in the app, I am using a brand new iPhone 15 with updated software. I haven’t grown a beard or gotten facial surgery. I have tried standing in front of blank walls, different lighting conditions. If I am having so much trouble I can only imagine the difficulty of those who have slightly changed their look, have older ID photos, are using phones with lower quality cameras. I know MitID uses a third party face scanning technology, so to an extent it’s wrong to blame MitID, but they should really, really consider changing the technology. AND it’s critical to allow for multiple tries at face scanning without kicking users back to the start of the registration flow.

After a dozen attempts, I can only conclude that this app doesn’t function. I can’t speak to MitID management once connected, but the process for signing up is poorly designed and built. The flow for “manual entry” of passport details is completely broken. If I manually enter the details, and then scan my chip, I am returned to the passport details screen. The chip scanning is very unreliable. The app does nothing to suggest signal strength, gives a passive aggressive message suggesting I shouldn’t move my phone while scanning, and when scanning fails (which is almost every time) I have to tap away from the failure message and begin again. The face scan is the worst offender, however. There’s no transparency regarding what the face scan really does — my passport photo is a couple years old and taken with a different lens, so I fail to see how my front camera will be a good match. It’s a shame the sign up doesn’t work — this would otherwise be a much more convenient option.

This app is a joke. Straight up felt like a movie prop from a spy movie, where a fancy animation creates the illusion that you’re using some spectacular scanning technology, when in fact it’s nothing but a looping animation and pretend play. What’s even better is, when support was notified about the uselessness of their app, they send you a list of bullet points with obvious things to try, like you’re some incompetent person. I rarely review things. I understand things aren’t perfect. But if things don’t work, either fix it or give users who can’t show up at borgerservice an option.