Undistinguished Identity

This last weekend I was talking with a friend about Google, and the tracking of identity. I blogged about Google, Identity and Privacy a few weeks back, and have been doing a lot of R&D in this area. On Monday there was the uproar about the AOL leak of search queries and how this data could be used to locate the person who was making the queries. What this article does not address is the "undistinguished identity" that the person is revealing ... information about themselves that even they do not know.

The more that I discussed the issue with my friend, it started to really get clear to me that my concerns about provacy and identity are not as much my identity as most people think about it ... but large systems and companies that gain access to my undistinguished identity.

What do I mean by this? To me, undistinguished identity is all of my thoughts and behaviors that are completely a reaction to stimulus around me. Companies like Google are beginning to gain vast amounts of information about me, what I search for, when I search for it, and then have the ability to relate to to seemingly unrelated events.

To me, it's not just about companies knowing information about me that I also know ... it's when they begin to know me, better than I know me.

[tags: identity digitalidentity distinguished undistinguished google aol]