This week I have been tasked with discussing the pros and cons of having multiple online identities. The question is too blunt, it ignores the nuances and the contexts in which we express multiple identities virtually. The issues facing a varied online presence are multifaceted and all virtual interactions have virtues and failings.
Warburton asserts that our “virtual self” is just an accumulation of electronic data – ” the things that we say about ourselves, the things that others say about us” or our interactions with electronic machines online. Our online identity is what we post on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, of course that means that our professional and personal identities are different but the boundaries between them are being blurred.
Facebook and Google are the faces of the personal data economy, collecting and selling our personal information for profit. This is one reason why they insist on creation of an authentic identity, being anonymous doesn’t generate content. Christopher Poole, the creator of 4chan where users post anonymously and there is no archive, dismisses the notion that having multiple identities is “lacking in integrity” like Facebook executives have suggested. I agree with him when he suggests that “identity is prismatic”, because we as humans adapt and evolve our identity based on which social groups we inhabit.
Having an authentic identity doesn’t mean that people are in fact genuine. People behave online like they behave offline, self-censorship is rife and frank thoughts can often be suppressed. In other instances authentic identity has not been a barrier to trolling and vitriolic abuse (generally aimed at women and minorities).
Edward Snowden’s revelations about the mass surveillance and collection of metadata has made the general public more aware of how much our privacy is eroded on the digital world. The more info we give away on the web the more vulnerable we get and herein lies one of the main problems of having multiple identities. The following video is a prime example:
On one of my regular forays into the darknet I came across people who offer whole new identities which are obviously stolen from the data gathered from the web and public records, US Passports/Green Cards go for as little $500, credit card information is even cheaper due to the amount of personal data available to dedicated hackers. There is also a forum dedicated to posting login information stolen from dedicated servers.
This year I have been constantly reminded by colleagues, during my internship, to have LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. This makes you more visible online and employers can infer a lot from my posts and connections about my personality and scan the feed to perform a background check.
It is therefore prudent to have multiple identities online to create a segmented virtual presence, it’s better to limit the extent to which our personal and professional existences interact. For the people concerned about data mining and privacy intrusions from governments and corporations some practical solutions may be in order like using the Ghostery app on Firefox to prohibit websites from collecting data and installing cookies. If you are mildly paranoid you can use the TOR browser to make yourself anonymous online everywhere.
- Krotoski, A., 2012. Online identity: is authenticity or anonymity more important? Guardian UK. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/19/online-identity-authenticity-anonymity
- Warburton , S., 2010. Digital Identity Matters, London, UK: King’s College London. Available at: http://digitaldisruptions.org/rhizome/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/rhiz08_DigitalIdentityMatters.pdf .
- Sullivan, M., 2012. Data Snatchers! The Booming Market for Your Online Identity. PC World. Available at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/258034/data_snatchers_the_booming_market_for_your_online_identity.html
You're Inside My Head 
I definitely agree with what you say about the boundaries being blurred between our professional and social online interactions. However, I also believe that we should try and prevent this as much as possible in order for these identities to serve their purpose. The “Internet Privacy Prank” video is really interesting because even though all of this information about them is accessible online, it is somehow more shocking to hear it from somebody standing right next to you. I know that a lot of people do not worry about privacy or security issues but today it is important that they do. This “blur” between the two worlds is quite apparent and so I think we need to be aware that this may affect the distribution of our personal information now and in the future of the internet and technology. Do you think that employability is the biggest issue we face when our professional profiles are confused with personal ones?
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Hi Pippa
Thanks for the comments. I do agree that there should be a clear separation of our personal and professional lives online and I hope that point came across in the blog post but it does get harder to compartmentalise the two lives like you mentioned. It might be down to the fact that we are constantly available online while a decade ago your work life ended when you simply left the office building.
Employability is one if not the most important concern when professional and personal overlap because it all points to personal and professional integrity and how trustworthy you are. People are very likely to disagree with the ethics or practices of their employer but will keep quite because they need to put food on the table and cannot afford to criticize them in a professional forum. An example would be the a defence contractor who is uncomfortable with creating weapons and expresses his/her misgivings privately to their friends on facebook, they have every right to do so but an employer is unlikely to have a sympathetic view. But as the following video shows, the professional world is already encroaching on the personal world in a bid to get their workers to promote a brand.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29711775
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This is a good and interesting post, but just to play Devil’s Advocate for a second in order to create discussion, I’m interested in what you’d say to the many people on and around the internet who say things now like ‘If you wish to be anonymous, you must have something to hide’.
Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with that entirely, I do feel that maybe we should remain accountable for our actions in a way that a number of Twitter etc. trolls are not, and that if we have these frank views that people disagree with, they should be allowed to disagree with them, although you are right that this can lead to a kind of ‘censorship by public opinion’, a problem for those who hold extreme views.
Finally, your mention of the darknet and TOR is a good point on this topic… it is possible to exist on the internet with no identity, let alone the ‘one or multiple’ suggested by the topic title.
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Cheers Andy for the helpful comments.
To those people who say that there is no need for anonymity if you have nothing to hide I’ll simply say that everyone has something to hide.
Humans are social creatures but also private, context and social circle is important. I don’t want my employer and the general public to know my intimate details and thoughts; professional and personal realms must be separate but this get’s difficult everyday.
The Internet archives evrything, nothing in the surface web can hide for long and your past can catch up to you. But I’m not the same person I was 5-6 years ago, my beliefs and views have evolved and will continue to do so. The point being that it’s unfair for people to be beholden to their past, we deserve a chance to have a clean break from the past and start anew.
In terms of dealing with trolls I must say that is a price we must be willing to pay for free and fair exchange of thoughts, twitter, facebook and their ilk are linked to an ip address and authentic real life identity so dealing with them is easier. But for anonymous trolls we can and should simply ignore them.
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