Notes on Online Identity

Overview

A person has multiple social roles and connects to networks from a variety of machines in different locations. People negotiate their identity by interacting informally with other persons and formally with agents (people or technologies) in the role of organizational gatekeepers. During these negotiations individuals disclose information about themselves (the privacy issue) in order to authenticate themselves - demonstrate that they are who they say they are (the security issue) and establish mutual trust (the social issue).

CMC Support for Multiple Roles

Life is a role-playing game in the sense that we all have multiple roles which we switch among depending on our social surroundings and activities. Unlike the roles in plays or online games, the combination of all our roles is who we really are socially. Early forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC) did not provide much support for multiple roles. The computer administrator's one person, one account, one group, one set of permissions goal is realistic for only the most rigid of formal organizations where each employee has fixed and distinct tasks.

Software makers have dealt with the multiple role problem in a variety of ways:

1. Unix/Linux operating systems implemented multiple group memberships and the sudo command.
2. Microsoft's WindowsNT implemented multiple group membership, trust relationships among networks, and the capability for individuals to set permissions on shared files. However NT network administrators were able to turn off those features, making their networks look more like old mainframe computers.
3. Apple's Os X made it easy for users to select a "location" with a profile of hardware and software connection information.
4. Web applications for ecommerce typically allow the customer to create one or more profiles containing information disclosed by the user.

The lack of standards for usernames and passwords, the requirement that no two login names be the same, and people's concerns about privacy and spam have proliferated the number of online identities that a single individual must manage. Suggestions that some form of universal identity be used online raise serious problems.

Anonymity, Authentication, and Democracy Community is based on repeated patterns of social interaction among members. When people are anonymous, it is difficult to establish and maintain those interactions. As discussed in a U. S. National Academy of Sciences' publication, Peter Steiner's famous dog cartoon illustrates the fears that many observers of internet social life had in the early years. [Note: You don't see the cartoon itself because of intellectual property issues. A print of it is on sale from the New Yorker's Cartoon Bank.] In virtual communities participants have an established identity even if it is as a character in a role-playing game. In a virtual community where all the participants knew one another in real life, a dog test character had the description: "On InfoCity everyone knows you're a dog".

Having an identity encourages someone in a virtual community to be responsible for their online behavior. It allows the group to apply normative power for social control. It makes authenticated users accountable for their actions. It also creates the potential for surveillance by formal authorities including governments and organizations.

In a democratic community there are situations where anonymity is desirable. For example: voting, suggestion boxes, or criticism of those in power without fear of retaliation.

In the case of online libraries stakeholders have contradictory interests in how authentication will be managed. "Content provider" companies would like to keep track of what everybody reads or listens to in order to make a profit from their intellectual property. Government security agencies would like to know who is reading dangerous or forbidden things for the purposes of censorship or law enforcement Many individuals in their role as citizens of a democracy expect to be able to read privately and without surveillance whatever they choose to read.

Kurt Reymers' award winning student paper Identity and the Internet: A symbolic interactionist perspective on computer-mediated social networks remains a useful introduction to the sociology of online identity. Virtual Identity by Eric Downing and Privacy and Anonymity by M. Herman are two papers from the Computers and Society class archive.