Guidance

GOV.UK Verify

Updated 26 April 2023

GOV.UK Verify has closed

You can no longer use GOV.UK Verify to create a new identity account, or use an existing identity account to sign in to any government services.

How to access services that no longer use GOV.UK Verify

The service you need to use will make it clear how to access it instead.

It may have got in touch with you directly, such as by email, or it may make it clear in the service itself.

Contact the service you need if you’re not sure.

Services that previously used GOV.UK Verify

What’s happening to your data

Post Office will delete all user accounts when GOV.UK Verify closes.

Digidentity will delete user accounts after 2 years of inactivity (unless you use your account for other Digidentity services). You can also delete your own account.

After accounts are deleted, Digidentity and Post Office are required to keep some information for up to 7 years. This is for audit, counter-fraud and record keeping reasons.

This is in line with their privacy statements - see the Digidentity privacy statement (PDF) and the Post Office Identity Account privacy statement (PDF).

How to delete your Digidentity account

You can delete your Digidentity account by signing in and selecting the ‘Delete’ option from the ‘Settings’ section.

Sign in to Digidentity.

If you cannot sign in and you want to delete your account, contact Digidentity using the details in the ‘Support’ section.

How to get help

If you have a question about your Digidentity or Post Office account

Contact the company you proved your identity with:

If you have a question about a service that previously used GOV.UK Verify

You need to contact the service itself.

About GOV.UK Verify

GOV.UK Verify was a secure way to prove who you are online. Once you had proved your identity to access a service once, you could use your identity account to access certain other services.

‘Identity providers’ carried out the identity checks. These were companies that the government had approved to verify identities. This was for user privacy and security reasons.

With GOV.UK Verify:

  • information was not stored in one place
  • there was no unnecessary sharing of user information
  • the government department did not know which identity provider you had chosen
  • all the identity providers had to meet government and international standards for security and data protection

The replacement for GOV.UK Verify is GOV.UK One Login, which is being built by the Government Digital Service. You can read about progress with GOV.UK One Login on the GDS blog.