Episode 050: 09‐24‐2024 Universal Online Identification - GluuFederation/identerati-office-hours GitHub Wiki
Title: Universal Online Identification, or On the Internet Everyone Knows You’re a Dog
- Host: Mike Schwartz, Founder/CEO Gluu
- Guest: Lisa LeVasseur, Founder of Internet Safety Labs
- Pernille Tranberg, Independent advisor in data and AI Ethics. Data Democracy and individual data control.
Description
There is no safe haven of anonymity for internet users. Users are being universally identified for marketing purposes as a matter of practice. Identity resolution and customer data platforms are the evil twin of identity and access management. These are mature industries that are highly interconnected with hundreds of publishers (i.e. brands) AND amongst themselves. Moreover, nearly 40% of companies that perform identity resolution are registered data brokers. There's insufficient awareness and regulatory oversight of these industries, and privacy policies are inadequate to explain the worldwide networks of marketing entities sharing and selling user data.
Why is privacy important, why is it so hard to be private in the digital world, what can you do to maintain a little privacy and how is AI making it even harder!
Homework
- The Worldwide Web of Human Surveillance: Identity Resolution & Customer Data Platforms
- Pervasive identity surveillance for marketing purposes
- Unified ID 2.0 Overview
- European Unified ID
Extra Credit
Takeaways
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You are being tracked, and even if you assiduously follow the recipe Pernilla describes in her "Digital Self Defense Tools" homework, dozens of companies create a multi-dimensional profile of you, which may not contain PII per se, but which descibes only one human. Instagram's recent mendacity is obvious: not only did they know who the kids are for years, they probably know who the parents and siblings are too.
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One of the largest companies in the sector creates an identifer called "LiveID", which is has become so predominant in the industry, that bidding systems have parameterized "liveid". But few people are aware that they are associated with a LiveID.
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There are some efforts to create more transparent and well governed tracking identifiers and platforms that strike a balance between privacy and the legitimate preferences of people to advertise their interests and profile. However, consumer interest is underrepresented in this effort. Could be an interesting role for Kantara?
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Lisa is working on a third party privacy certification program for mobile apps, that verifies the network traffic emenating from the software.