Business Models

Digital Identity: The chat room paradox

 Dave summarises well the latest thinking on identity and disclosure issues that Internet has made imperative.  This opening paragraph summarises the problem.

Your kids want to go in a chatroom and you will only let them go into the chatroom if you know (in principle) who everyone else in the chatroom is, but you won’t let them go into the chatroom if they have to disclose who they are. So in an “open space”, you want to everyone else to disclose their identity but keep yours secret, just in case of one the other people who has disclosed their identity is lying and is actually someone else (so that if they do something bad, the police can’t catch them).

My head hurts.

Source: Digital Identity: The chat room paradox

Dave goes on to talk about the solution as one that ensures secure identity, yet flexible movement.

…  It’s not who you are, but what you are: are you an adult, UK subject, Manchester City fan, British Airways customer or a single parent?

Finally the argument for federated identity.

My bank could give me an avatar of Donald Duck, but I couldn’t use it to get up to no good because if a police warrant asked my bank who “Donald Duck” is, it would tell them: and naturally the chat room operator — such as Microsoft — would only accept pseudonyms from reputable organisation’s such as my bank. Thus, no-one in the chat room would know the real identity of the participants but none of the participants could get away with any illegal behaviour. In just the same way, a travel agent might be happy to accept my BA Executive Club pseudonym, which leads us back into the world of federation etc..

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2 thoughts on “Digital Identity: The chat room paradox”

  1. Caveat emptor!

    Very few parents would let their kids out to play without a general idea of who, where, what and when.

    Why should it be any different online?

    If all we’re doing is chatting about stuff, sure, privacy might be OK, even desirable. But if serious business is being discussed or if children are involved, then I think most people would prefer to deal with “open identitites” rather than with psuedonyms or avatars.

  2. I’d agree re open identities, provided the first constraint mentioned is met, ie knowing who, where and whenhte child/ person is with.

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