Identity and Unintended Consequences

Once again the nag­ging ques­tions of on-line iden­tity, authen­tic­ity, and dis­am­bigua­tion have come across my radar screen. Josh Clark over at Glob­al­Moxie posted a cou­ple of times this last week on both Spock and Wink. //engtech had a guest post on rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment by Tim Nash ear­lier in the month, and claimD and openID have shown up in most of the top tech blogs at some point in the last quarter.

We’ve already seen some of the pre­dictable con­se­quences emerge. Among them: iden­tity theft for both profit and revenge, fir­ings for on-line activ­i­ties that don’t fit corp. images, and the iden­ti­ties of anony­mous par­ties (unin­ten­tion­ally) revealed through third parties.

Now I’m wait­ing to see what the unin­tended con­se­quences of this on-line iden­tity cri­sis and the attempts to fix it will be. Stay tuned.