Currently, almost 100% of the Spanish population has an electronic ID, but what percentage of them know the ID PIN? The reality here is quite different.
Whether it is because of a lack of dissemination / information by the Government to the public, or because of the poor training of the officials in charge of renewing the ID or a thousand and one other reasons, the reality is that people are not well aware of the potential of their electronic ID and therefore do not know that there is something called PIN, necessary to perform, for example, electronic signature operations.
Well, from this post I want to shed some light on this dark world that the eID may seem to a large percentage of the population.
What is the ID PIN?
The ID PIN is a necessary part of your ID so that the private data of your eID cannot be accessed without your consent. For those who do not know, the electronic ID has stored two types of data. Making a very “high level” summary, these would be:
- Public data; are those that are accessible with the public key of the certificate and, therefore, everyone can know (such as your name).
- Private data; this is the information in the certificate that should not be known to others (such as your age), so you need a password (PIN) to protect this information.
At the time of obtaining the eID, in addition to an informative document, we are given a “blind envelope” containing a randomly generated code. Well, this code is the PIN that comes with our electronic ID by default. Just like the cell phone PIN, easy, isn’t it?
How can I change the PIN of the ID?
There are two alternatives, the old one and the modern one (this is the one you should use to be consistent with the object of the change).
- Go to the police station and look for a PAD Kiosk. The electronic ID has a security mechanism that, although the eID PIN would be equivalent to the mobile PIN, this procedure would be like the PUK, only that it uses our fingerprint instead of a long code. It should not take more than 10 minutes following the instructions on the PAD, but we have to take into account the time to travel to the police station and the possible queue to use the PAD (especially if the police station is small).
- Use the telematic procedure to change the ID. This will be more or less complicated depending on whether our operating system is Windows (easier) or Linux or MAC (less easy).
Ok, I know my ID PIN, now what?
So now you can use your eID and its digital certificates!
For example, you can use your electronic ID to identify yourself legally in the electronic offices of the public administrations and carry out your procedures telematically (through internet) or to sign electronically any document that you are able to sign on paper. You can try the latter with the totally free download of our viafirma desktop to use it on your Windows or MAC machine. In any case, don’t forget that you will need a eID reader for desktop.
Are there other options for signing up?
Nowadays there are other options for signing that can be much simpler than using a eID.
You can try the different ways to sign a document digitally in the following link: