UOSM2008 – Topic 2: Discuss the arguments for and against having more than one online identity #UOSM2008

Whatever we are just occasional users or we define us as residential persons for the online space, we are all concern regarding the identity and privacy concepts.

First of all, the online identity represents a sum of all the footprints which are left by a user in its online journey. One identity helps companies such as Facebook or Google to deliver better services. For example, Facebook needs to know the traits of a user in order to recommend closer friends or to connect the user with its favorite artists. Moreover, one identity of an individual in the online environment can be seen as an analogy of the real one. For instance, two years ago I had a Facebook profile and I had not used it. Some mates created a new account with my name, they posted a phone of me, they added all my personal information, in one word that account seams the real one. The problems started to appear when they started to post messages which affected me in the real life. Fortunately, because Facebook allows just one account for one person I reported that user and I could delete all the bad content.

However, on the other side, a user must be able to choose between its privacy on the internet or not. There have been started to appear a lot of problems regarding the personal life of an user. Using cookies (small chunks of information), the websites can store information regarding a user, on its own browser (Internet Society, video) . This information has no real value for one website, but there are third party companies which receive this data. Connecting all this personas (partial identities), these companies can build a virtual model of the customer. Using the virtual model they are able to deliver right advertisement, to track users or event predict their options. These processes are done in the background, because the actual result is represented by the advertisements posted. Also, other aspect of using just one identity as Krotoski, A. (2012) suggested, is the inability of a person to escape from its life. For example, on Facebook, even if the person returns after a while, he must delete his all history and friend in order to start. The new account is not possible, because there just be a relation of one to one (virtual – real).

The actual solution for the privacy can not be expressed as a simple list of actions.  As most of all the humans rights, the privacy is a social agreement between individuals. It depends from culture to culture, country to country. This makes more difficult a solution to be founded over the web, which is mainly defined as an open space.  In my opinion, the only way of overcoming this issues, can arise from both governments and people. For instance, E.U. adopted regulations regarding the usage of cookies, informing and making the users aware of their provided data (Figure 1). Furthermore, users have to be aware that some of the websites can offer more identities (such Yahoo Messager) in order to make the experience more enjoyable, but the websites which reflects the real life experience of a person must have just one identity.

Figure 1- Print screen Google Search

Internet Society, Video ‘Who Is Tracking Me and How Do They Do It?’,Internet Society [Online]. Available at: http://www.internetsociety.org/your-digital-footprint/tracking [Accessed: 23 February 2014].

Krotoski, A. (2012) ‘Online identity: is authenticity or anonymity more important?’,The Guardian, 19 April [Online]. Available at:http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/19/online-identity-authenticity-anonymity [Accessed: 23 February 2014].