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In this post, I’d like to talk about the digital and social identity proxies that we create so that we can interact online – and talk about the steps I will be taking over the next few weeks to clarify and separate my own online personas.
I was lucky enough to have early online access (e.g. email and Usenet) when at Purdue from 1985-1987, but could never have imagined how the Internet would grow to become such an integrated part of modern society. Some things are just hard to foresee.
NOTE: Online identity is by no means a simple or narrow topic, and there are lots of issues and topics to be discussed. On the agenda for future posts: competing identity systems (e.g. Facebook Connect or Windows Live ID), credentials management (e.g. managing login/password for 85 websites), and how Cloud Computing amplifies the need for secure identity systems.
Email account(s) are ways that friends, co-worker and businesses can communicate with you. If you think about email, I predict that most of you have at least two main accounts – one for personal emails and one for work emails. I personally have about 10 of them that I use relatively frequently, though 8 of those are set up to simply forward to either my more frequently read personal and work accounts.
The email accounts serve as a proxy for us online. I have personal communications which I do not believe should be available to the IT staff at my work, and I also have sensitive work communications that should not be stored on personal machines or free email accounts. I am one person, but I have split my digital identity (at least for email) into two personas.
In face, I have several other roles or personas, in terms of email addresses:
Unfortunately, I have not been quite so forward thinking when it comes to establishing personas for interacting socially and professionally on the Internet.
I originally launched this blog 5 years ago, for example, as Jeff Jones Security Blog at the URL http://blogs.technet.com/security. I initially had no readership and treated it very much as my personal blog with posts like: A (Not Always Funny) History and Analysis of Web-Based Antivirus and Security Products, and Web-based Security Deja-Vu: Microsoft OneCare Live, Symantec Genesis and McAfee Falcon. Of course, I also mixed in work-related posts like, Windows Vista : Threat-driven Design combined with Security Quality Process. However, as time went on, it became clear to me that I had to be aware that what I said on the blog would – regardless of caveats – be attributed to Microsoft.
Now, let’s switch gears and talk about Facebook. I created my Facebook account in 2006, if I recall correctly, and basically ignored it for several years. I still remember reading an article by a college student complaining that Facebook was for college students and how irritated she was that “old” people were creating accounts. When my wife and a few friends discovered Facebook a few years later and even a few out of touch friends from high school, it was great to reconnect and share updates. Naturally, when colleagues and co-workers sent me invites, I welcomed them as Facebook friends as well. Now, I have several hundred Facebook friends and there are some folks on there that are a crazy mix of personal, professional, acquaintances, schoolmates, children of friends and others.
I would like to engage with my professional colleagues, but may not want to share details from my personal life with those same people. Similarly, there are times I want to blog in my professional persona, but not in my role as a Microsoft spokesperson.
In reality, I started the process of clarifying my online personas back in February when we announced Changes Coming to blogs.technet.com/security, renamed this blog and start a process of adding other security subject matter experts as contributors. That will continue. Here are some other steps that I’ll be taking over the next few months:
No doubt that as I am pursuing this action, twitter or Facebook will make changes to provide much better identity management and perhaps even incorporate the concept of Personas and provide better options for content management. Or, maybe not. Either way, I will document my progress in implementing these change and blog an update
[This post was also published on http://securityjones.com/identity/digital-identity-clarifying-my-online-personas/]