Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

> There's a comforting indirectness about it.

That's the problem - it's too comforting. Those are not pseudonyms, those are unique identifiers which happen to be different from your username.

There's no difference between those unique identifiers and a DHCP-leased IP address handed out to you by a WiFi or dialup gateway.

Each of these unique identifiers is cross-referenceable to your real-world identity. They are therefore neither anonymous nor pseudonymous.

Any "pseudonymity" is only occuring between vendors, so users can "roam" between vendor "networks". The indirection layer is necessary to prevent vendors from stealing each other's customers. Any real or imagined privacy benefit for the user is a PR side effect of inter-vendor revenue protection.

I'm confused, Rich. Isn't it the case that under this scheme I'm the only who knows that "AmazonBoy123" is the same person (well, the same digID) as "eBayGirl321"? If so, then doesn't that prevent many, but not all, of the abuses a digID enables since no one can aggregate my data across accounts? I mean, this replaces the system by which I give all the e-tailers the same email address. Why isn't this a net improvement? (I'm not arguing, just trying to understand.)