Your "Yes" Is No Longer Yours: eIDAS Privacy Flaw

The EU’s digital wallet was meant to secure your identity. Instead, it’s letting your consent slip into hands you’ll never see—hands that could reach across the Atlantic.

You click ‘yes’ once.
Then someone else walks away with your keys—and you’ll never know who.
— Anonymous eIDAS tester, Frankfurt, 2025

In a pristine lab outside Frankfurt, a smartphone screen pulses green: transaction approved. Anna, a hypothetical 34-year-old test-case user, logs into her tax portal through the EU’s digital wallet. The app is slick, the process flawless. She shuts it down and leaves, unaware of the shadow trailing her choice. Across the room, an engineer stares at a monitor. A log flickers: her consent just slithered to three services she never authorized—a bank, a fintech aggregator, a shadow operator disguised as a legitimate node. He scribbles a note and stays silent. This isn’t a glitch. It’s the system.

The EU’s digital wallet, a flagship of the eIDAS 2.0 initiative, promised a fortress for your identity: one app to control taxes, banking, medical records—a single key to your digital life. But in 2025, beta tests exposed a crack that could swallow your autonomy whole. Your “yes” doesn’t stop where you think. It moves, like a ghost you can’t catch, through pipelines you can’t see. And someone—maybe in Frankfurt, maybe in Silicon Valley—is already holding it.

Why should Americans care? Because this isn’t just Europe’s problem. The U.S. is racing toward its own digital IDs—Login.gov, Apple Wallet, blockchain startups—while grappling with Big Tech scandals like Cambridge Analytica. If consent can be hijacked in the EU’s tightly regulated system, what happens in the U.S., where tech giants often outpace oversight? This is a warning: your “yes” could betray you, no matter where you live.

What Changed?

The EU’s digital wallet was pitched as a revolution: one tap for taxes, another for banking, a third for health records. It’s the backbone of eIDAS 2.0, unifying digital identity across Europe.
But 2024 beta tests revealed Wallet Relay—not a bug, but a design choice. Consent given to one service can be forwarded to others without a second prompt.
Picture Anna confirming her tax portal access. Her wallet sends a consent token. It doesn’t stay put—it ripples outward, like ink through water, to a bank app, a fintech aggregator, and a shadow operator disguised as a legitimate node. All legal. All automatic.
Her wallet’s log? Empty—as if nothing ever asked, or needed asking.
In a leaked sandbox report, a user authorized a government portal. Within a minute, a third-party node, cloaked as legitimate, requested her data. No alert reached her. She thought she was in control. She wasn’t.

Why It Matters

Wallet Relay turns consent into a runaway current, exposing a chain of vulnerabilities.
A rogue node—say, a hacker posing as a trusted relay—can siphon data without touching your wallet. In 2025 tests, such nodes succeeded, and the user’s screen stayed silent.
The real danger: gray-zone legality. eIDAS doesn’t ban consent forwarding or require clear audits. A bank accessed tax data because it was “pre-approved.” The user couldn’t revoke it—they didn’t even know.
U.S. systems, from state DMV apps to Login.gov, could be just as vulnerable. If the EU’s GDPR can’t secure consent, what happens where oversight lags?
American platforms like Visa and PayPal are already integrating with eIDAS-linked services. A flaw in Europe could leak into your accounts in New York or records in California.

What’s Behind It

The European Commission sells eIDAS 2.0 as a dream of convenience. But the API’s logic tells a darker story.
Wallet Relay assumes trust in the first node extends to the entire chain—like handing your house key to a friend who passes it to a stranger.
This is intentional. Relay nodes prioritize developer speed over user control. In sandbox tests, coders skipped re-checks to streamline integration.
It mirrors dark patterns in cookie banners that trick you into “accepting all.” But the stakes here are taxes, health records, finances.
No audit trail exists. You can’t see where your consent went or pull it back. In one test, a token lingered after logout. There’s no kill switch. Your “yes” becomes a living thing—untethered, autonomous, no longer yours.
This echoes U.S. tech’s history: Facebook’s APIs leaking to Cambridge Analytica, or Apple’s Wallet IDs for driver’s licenses. The risks aren’t overseas—they’re already here.

What It Means for You

For Anna, the digital wallet is a trap disguised as convenience.

She taps “confirm,” thinking she’s in control. But her consent moves—from tax portal to bank, bank to fintech, fintech to a rogue node posing as legitimate.
Her wallet’s interface is a liar—clean, silent, blind. No alerts. No logs. Just a blank screen hiding the truth.
This is your future, too. Your data could be reused without knowledge: a bank pulling medical history, a shadow node selling your profile, all under a “valid” consent chain.
In one sandbox test, a rogue relay claimed data within an hour. No alert. No log. No echo of the door that just opened.
As the U.S. adopts digital IDs—TSA PreCheck, Apple Wallet—these cracks could open here. Your “yes” might cross the Atlantic, entering systems you’ve never touched.

The Endgame

The digital wallet promised a key to your identity. Instead, it locks you in a house where you clutch a useless key, while unseen doors swing open behind you.

"A minimalist black-and-white illustration of a silhouette holding a glowing key, with an open door behind and faint digital nodes fading into a void, symbolizing the loss of control over digital consent."

One “yes,” and the system speaks for you, endlessly—until you’re no longer the author of your own consent. We tap “confirm,” believing we’re in charge. But all we’re confirming is a lie we can’t unlearn.

Natallia — Digital Identities Observer
Special dispatch · REESTR, Summer 2025
Telegram: @reestr_global
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Your “Yes” Is No Longer Yours