The Five Roles of Identity

I ran an interesting blog post entitled "The Five Roles of Identity":

At it's heart the problem of network identity is how to manage the model of the user available to web sites. User's dream of a design that's explicit, practical, and respects their privacy. Web sites covet different aspects of the user-model model. The fashion web site may desire to know the user's hair color. The travel web site may desire to know when your employeer is planning a summer shutdown. The bank site may desire to know a statement of account of your current mortgage.

The demand for better models of visitors is what drives the market for solutions in the identity market. For example it's what keeps DoubleClick in business. DoubleClick aggregates a statistical model of users from their browsing habits and then sell that to web sites. Web sites then use that to target their marketing. For all I know if you tell one of their clients your hair color then DoubleClick may well add that to their model.

I haven't read the essay with a fine-toothed comb yet, but it does seem relevant to my interests in Network Personal Identity. The five roles are:

1. Users
2. Sites
3. Intermediaries
4. Solution vendors
5. Rule setters (law, government, standards bodies)

-- Jack Krupansky