Identity Theft
and Digital Identity
Windley's Weblog on Enterprise
Computing
I couldn't help but put this news story
in the context of my recent trip to
the Digital ID World conference. One of the things that became
very clear to me was that almost no one was interested or concerned
about linking identity in the digital world to a real person.
They were much more concerned about what properties that identity
carried with it. For example, an online bookseller only cares
that the identity being presented has a valid address and a valid
credit card. The credit car company cares on that the card gets
paid on time and is used in a consistent manner. And so
on.
Identity theft is exacerbated when we
cannot tie identity to a real person. In fact, identity theft
depends on this inability in our current system. Governments
almost always care about identity being linked to a real person
(usually so that that real person can be sued or go to jail if they
fail to meet their obligations such as paying their taxes or not
honoring a contract). I think the rest of the world should care
too. I want my identity to be linked to me, not to be some
disembodied collection of properties.
7:09:54 AM 
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