Identity Woman

Independent Advocate for the Rights and Dignity of our Digital Selves

user-centric

Personal Anchors on the Web for Digital Identities

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I have been evangelizing about user-centric identity on the web 5 years. I talk about the ideas with people constantly explaining and re-explaining different developments in the field, forward looking projects and visionary ideas community members talk about. I watch what I say carefully and I notice when I start thinking and explaining something differently.

The new term that has emerged for me this week is “anchor on the web”... as in Where is your anchor on the web? or People have an anchor on the web – this is there “identity” – the question is do they control (owning a domain name) it or is it controlled by the company that does.

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I link this metaphor because it evokes the image of a boat that is you and an anchor that is linking you to somewhere – do you want this to land in a stable place that you have control over? Likely yes – if you anchor to someone else’s ship (have your name in their domain space) you are literally tied to them. Rather then being able to visit them on your own terms and leave if you like.

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You can get copies of these images under CC license here.

In my last post I talked about facebook URLs and people getting their own domain name along with the contrast of usability with each. Chris Messina also wrote about facebook URLs and correctly points out that this is a battle over your digital identity.

I got a comment today from IWantMyName.com (they also have a blog) saying I was absolutely right about usability issues that domain registrars have.

You are absolutely right. It’s a common problem of domain registrars / hosting providers. They’re too focused on up-selling other services and the secondary market instead of serving the actual internet user. We’re watching the identity community closely with iWantMyName and will definitely provide identity management features in the future. For now, we already made the domain registration process easy and are helping users setting up apps like Gmail, Tumblr, Posterous etc.

Coincidently – today at SemTech the CEO of Nombray presented as part of Chris Saad’s talk about DataPortability. They let you very easily create a website under your own domain name that aggregates your information from around the web. I haven’t paid the $10 yet but I was very impressed with the usability of the sign up process and you can see my the 1/2 working site here.

There is of course Chi.mp too – but some how it feels a bit more like being tied to somewhere then actually owning your own domain (paying for it) and setting up the services under it.

The next level of interoperability and user-empowerment will be the way these systems map/document your online life and how they give you the data in a standard way when you leave their service to go to a different one.

I am hopeful these sites are the basis of what will become personal data stores that project VRM has brainstormed about and people/companies are developing.

UpDate: Wow and that was Post: 1000 for this blog!

Higgins opens up

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Big News in Identity Today
Project Higgins – which is being managed by the Eclipse open source foundation — is developing software for “user-centric” identity management, an emerging trend in security software. It enables individuals to actively manage and control their online personal information, such as bank account, telephone and credit card numbers, or medical and employment records — rather than institutions managing that information as they do today. People will decide what information they want shared with trusted online websites that use the software.
This is the first user-centric identity management effort to follow the open source software model, where hundreds of thousands of developers contribute — and continually drive improvements through collaborative innovation. Being an open source effort, Higgins will support any computer running Linux*, Windows* or any operating system, and will support any identity management system.
“To move online security to the next level, there has to be fundamental resolve among consumers, government and business to quickly adopt a system where the individual has more control over how information about them is managed and shared,” said John Clippinger, Senior Fellow for The Berkman Center. “Our aim is to construct an open and widely accessible software framework that puts the individual at the center of the identity management universe. With this framework in place, it will be easier for society to begin the migration to more secure online environments, where trusted networks can not only be easily formed, but effectively enforced. For in the end, security is not just technological, but social.”
Higgins will make it simple and secure for someone to change an address across all their online accounts with a single keystroke; delegate who can see what elements of their medical records; or change a password across online banking and brokerage accounts. For example, a person can grant their insurance company broad access to their personal information and medical records, while at the same time limiting the amount of data made available to their cable company. In turn, businesses can create new channels of communication with customers – enabling information to be shared securely across networks to deliver targeted, relevant products and services.

User-Centric collection of atributes and reputation

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We had a great lunch with Mary yesterday where we discussed this article and her comments about reputation portability. Ironically enough Mary’s comments excerpted and therefore were not complete. She articulated more deeply in our discussion how the the meaning of an eBay reputation has meaning within that community. When you extract it out of that community and look at it as someone who is not a member do the numbers have ‘meaning’ in the same way they do for those in the community.
Comment from Ivan the below article…

A small company called Opinity is trying to address this issue by aggregating many different sources of reputation data (ie. eBay rating, credit rating, etc.) to enable sites to interact w/individuals to get the reputation item they need for that trusted interaction to take place

This guy gets it! They are actually not just aggregating ‘reputation data’ and ratings but also membership in various website communities (you can say you have xhandle over on site Y when you are making comments on bulletin board Z but how do you prove it? Opintiy gives you tools to do this.
If identity is what others say about you (Dick has defined it this way in his identity 2.0 talk). If you are a member of an organization and they assert that about you. (how else do you show someone the membership cards in your wallet online?) Opinity gives people tools to support you authenticating your memberships in various organizations.
He continues

…I’m afraid that they may have a “chicken and the egg” problem in getting people using the service in order to get sites to support it and w/no sites supporting it users will be hard to come by.

 

This is where his understanding break down. Opinity is offering its services to communities/websites to use.
Opinity is much the same, although they offer partners the opportunity to tap into the data. These centralized data plays have no chance on today’s internet. Why even bother.
Here’s what we need – a referee and a scorekeeper. Open (I didn’t say free, mind you) APIs in and out, not just links to feedback scores. Figure out the rules (keep it flexible) and let other applications feed the database. Somebody please build this. Or eBay, open up your Feedback API.
I’m not alone in pleading for this. See what Rob Hof and others have to say as well.