Saturday, September 22, 2007

Online identities: management and multiplication

FMH sent me to this post summarizing online identity management tools: 25+ Ways to Manage Your Online Identity.

Identities on the web add up quickly. Identity management is the "next big thing" and the gold rush has been underway for years. It's a fierce battle.

I currently have manged "major" identities at Amazon, faughnan.com, faughnanlagace.com, Google Gmail/Blogger, LinkedIn, and, yes, even Facebook -- and those are only the ones I can remember right now. I debated including my Yahoo! identity in the mix, but unless Yahoo does something remarkable with Zimbra that's just a front for spammers. I do have a Microsoft Passport (or whatever they call that now) identity as well, but I try to forget that one. I used to have a .Mac identity, but Apple's .Mac hasn't delivered much value for money so that one is in abeyance. There are a myriad of "unmanaged" lesser identities, and of course all my emails have some form of identity associated with them ...

None of these net identities belong to my banks, who own my rock-world identity. Ok, so I have a US Passport, and Canada probably still counts me too.

Eventually I'm going to put links to all the managed digital identities on my faughnan.com page, if only so I can keep track of what's publicly revealed on each profile. Amazon in particular makes it easy to unwittingly reveal information, fortunately my reading tastes are rather dull.

BTW, John Gordon, in case you can't tell, is a pseudonym.

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