Digital ID Coach

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future, records, tools accounts, CRM, e - commerce, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Identity, Jeremiah Owyang, online accounts, online decisions, online identities, social media tools, social network, social networking, Twitter, user accounts, user-driven services

Reputation Management

April 17th, 2009

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We have many ways to view our identity. One way that we are known is by our reputation. Our friends and colleagues know who we are. They know us from our acts and activities. They know generally what kind of person we are. For example, we might be known as a kind or loving person, or maybe a jerk, a know-it-all, or a scoundrel.

For a business, the employees are the first line of the company’s reputation. Sometimes employees are not the most diplomatic representatives. In one recently publicized case, a video posted to YouTube by two playful employees caused a public relations nightmare for the company (and later regrets by the ex-employees).

It’s worth noting that while one event can do damage, it’s not the entire picture. Our real reputation is made up of what we do and say over time, what we are consistent about.

Coaching moment: There’s a great lifehacker article, The Importance of Monitoring Your Online Reputation, that talks about this:

These days, if you want to know more about someone, the first thing most of us do is Google them. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that monitoring your online reputation is extraordinarily important.

Go ahead and Google and Yahoo yourself, see what’s out there. Note how much is about someone whose name you share. What picture does this paint? Are you happy with it?

You can’t change the past, but you can change your future reputation. What will you do to paint a better picture of yourself?

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friends/family, future, history, records, tools business, employees, Google, Online Reputation, public relations nightmare, reputation, self, self-determination, single sign-on, SSO, Yahoo

Your Citizen-Self

April 16th, 2009

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Yesterday was April 15, which in the United States is a day of particular significance: Tax Day.

For most people Tax Day is a day of dread: they calculate (using increasingly complex rules) how much money they made during the year, how much of it was taxable, and how much money they owe the government. By midnight, the forms and money need to be postmarked and/or filed with the United States Treasury. After all, it’s “very expensive to run a government,” especially these days.

For nearly all of us, Tax Day also signifies our citizenship in the United States (our national identity) and of the state in which we are “domiciled” (where we live with intent to stay). Some parts of our lives that contribute to and define this identity:

Federal	State
Our voting registration and records, which are supposed to be anonymous but for the fact that we showed up at the polls Our passport, which allows us to travel out of the country Our social security number and records Our tax records Other records	Our Driver’s license Our real property, taxes and records Business and other licenses Other records

Coaching moment: What’s with the Other Records?

Various things (activities, circumstances, events) might result in our having other records with the government. These things may or may not be recorded with your knowledge. For example, have you ever applied for citizenship in another country? been in a public place where surveillance cameras are running? have the same name as someone famous? Sometimes it’s the crazy stuff that gets recorded. You might be interested to know about this other information that the government has on you.

You have access to government records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).The National Freedom of Information Coalition has a great page with sample FOIA letters that you can use to find out who knows what. You’ll need to write at least a couple of letters–to the Federal government and to the state(s) where you have lived.

Knowledge is power. If you want to know what these agencies know about you, it’s worth your time to write some letters (keep track of whom you wrote) and find out what, if anything, they have about you. After all, this is Your Citizen-Self.

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history, records, tools DOJ, FBI, Federal, Federal government, FOIA, government, government agencies, NFIC, records, State, United States, write a letter

Becoming Nobody

April 13th, 2009

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This story, Escape from America by Bruce Falconer, is about a man (Charles Albert Stopford III) who took on another identity and became someone else (Lord Christopher Buckingham). The quote below is from a point in time where the author meets up with Buckingham.

In spite of this, as we talked, Buckingham seemed nervous. He spoke in hushed tones, so quietly that my recorder sometimes had trouble registering his words. His eyes searched nearby tables for anyone who might be listening in. Several times he referred to his fear of being followed. I asked what he was running from. “I don’t know,” he said. “I won’t know until the circumstance arises.” He possessed the paranoid instinct of a survivalist, feverishly preparing for some imagined catastrophe that would never come. But like any lie lived too long, his had taken on elements of truth. Journalists had been phoning the Stopford family in Florida, asking where he was and whether he had returned to Europe. The family would not say. Buckingham clearly pleasured in the chase. Citing his amnesia, he still refused to explain what had first compelled the young Charles Stopford to abandon himself, as if sensing that the mystery, as long as it endured, would keep his pursuers on the hunt.

If the hunters ever got too close, Buckingham assured me he was prepared to disappear again. He was certain he would leave no traces. “I have vanished many times,” he told me. “It’s nice to just be no one, which makes the authorities really angry. When you vanish from the radar, it annoys them. There are people in offices for that.” He laughed at their expense. A year before, I would have cheered him on. But now, having met him and seen the life he had led, the sacrifices he had made (and forced others to make on his behalf), I could not bring myself to do it. The reality of his experience didn’t match the fantasy. Buckingham was not the dashing figure I had imagined; he was like anyone else, but seemed to lack something fundamental. Lately, I had been troubled by the recognition that, despite our talks, I could never really know him. It now occurred to me that he did not know himself. He had been running for so long, in so many guises, that his essence — whatever it is that makes us who we are — was now hopelessly diluted. He had desired to become someone else; now he was no one at all.

The story reminded me of the movie Catch Me If You Can, “a true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor.” Of note, Abagnale’s activities took place in the mid-1960s, before computer databases were so common and documentation of our every move and transaction were so thorough. These days it would be much more difficult to pull something like this off.

Coaching moment: Have you ever told a lie? If so, you may have had the trouble of trying to keep track of all related details. Now imagine that someone followed you around and took detailed notes of everything that happened. Not only that, the person is standing behind you with those notes. How likely is it that you’d be comfortable telling a lie now?

What if the person didn’t take accurate notes? In fact, the note takers aren’t taking full notes. There are bits of the picture that give a meaning to you, but are missing from the notes. For example, if you’ve ever bought a gift book from Amazon, the subject matter of that book will trigger Amazon suggestions for new books you might buy, even if you have no interest in that subject. Similarly, the credit card companies keep track of everything you buy, and correlate that information with all kinds of other behavior in other databases. However, that correlation doesn’t mean they really know who you are, right?

What kind of partial stories do you want to know about? Are there letters you can write to find out?

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history, records Bruce Falconer, Catch Me If You Can, Charles Albert Stopford III, Charles Stopford, Christopher Buckingham, Frank Abagnale Jr., identity papers, passport, personal change

Your Digital Dossier

April 10th, 2009

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We know so little about what’s in our “permanent records” and yet those records can have such a significant impact on what we do–and are allowed by others to do.

The first we might learn about this is in elementary school, when someone threatens us with a mark in our “permanent record.” Most people don’t give their records much thought, believing that certain entries expire. While this may be true (tickets disappear from our driving record after 7 years, and a bankruptcy from our financial records after 10 years. However, we don’t know and often can’t confirm the removal of anything from today’s digital records, since the urge to save data is so strong by people creating the databases, and the cost to save data is so small.

Coaching moment: It’s an informative and practical exercise to take a period of time and create your own digital dossier that says everything about you. Take notes on where you went, what you spent, how long you took and what considerations aided you in making a decision, who you talked with, what you said. Make your notes as detailed as possible, since in some situations your conversations or travels are being monitored by videos.

At the end of your recording period, look back to see what you recorded. Now here comes the fun part: what could someone who didn’t know you misconstrue or misunderstand? What information could be taken out of context and be used in a harmful way?

Remember: it’s not that you don’t have anything to hide. It’s that the power to use your data isn’t in your hands.

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