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Michael H. Sproule, a partner with the New York law firm of Akabas & Sproule, focuses his practice on intellectual property (particularly licensing, trademark and copyright practice) and corporate law. His experience includes work with both traditional and new economy clients in fields such as technology, the Internet, media and entertainment. A software programmer himself, Mike is interested in all aspects of technology and its impact on law and our society.

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The Alter Ego Advantage: Why Nom de Guerre by Populus Reduces Online Vulnerability

Written on
September 29th 2006
Author
by Michael H. Sproule  |
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Everyone needs a nom de guerre. While we enjoy the ability to interact more directly with others, an increasingly connected world makes it harder to maintain a sphere of personal, protected space. We have become vulnerable to exposure in surprising ways illustrated by some recent events:

• Users of AOL’s web search engine recently discovered that AOL publicly released their search histories. Released without any directly-identifying personal information, the sample was intended for use of researchers. Nonetheless, the identity of some individual users could be deduced, as demonstrated by the efforts of The New York Times and others, who were able to use the data to track down AOL users.

• Some directors of Hewlett-Packard learned the company launched an investigation into their contacts with business reporters, which may have included HP obtaining the directors’ phone records and even covert surveillance.

• Some users of Craigslist, who had responded to a personals ad, were shocked to find their responses posted on the Web. The individual who posted the ad apparently did so with the intention of embarrassing the responders. Many fell into the trap, revealing personal information in their responses.

• Some members of MySpace and other online communities are finding that employers, schools and others have been reviewing their profiles with results never expected when the profiles were posted.

Whether it is search histories, phone records, personal emails or online profiles, our networked world constantly invites each of us to reveal ourselves to others. But every revelation entails risk.

The law is offered as a way to protect individuals. For example, Craigslist users might (or might not, depending on one’s interpretation of the law) be able to sue the advertiser for maliciously revealing private facts in public. Or AOL users might be able to sue if AOL violated its privacy policy in revealing users’ search data.

If existing law is not seen as adequate to protect privacy, then stricter laws may be in the offing. Yet the law is a blunt instrument in this case. With a subject as nuanced and as personal as privacy, determining what should be protected and when may be impossible other than in the broadest terms. The resulting laws almost certainly will either protect too much or too little, but will never be able to protect only that which individuals want protected.

We are all familiar with the theory of six degrees of separation, which postulates that any two people are connected to each other by no more than six steps. The theory has not changed since Karinthy Frigyes wrote about it in the 1920s, and presumably, while never proven conclusively, has always been true.

Yet we feel the theory’s effects more strongly today, because, in a fully networked society, the connections among us, once obscure, have become so clear. Each bit of personal information we reveal becomes part of the net around us. We have lost a healthy sense of separation from others in the world. A mechanism is needed to create a buffer to the world. Pseudonymous identities could fill that need and allow us to recapture our lost separation.



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Reader Comments.

Mr. Sproule’s commentary is an excellent argument for the introduction of pseudonyms in order to protect either confidential or sensitive personal information on the public Internet.

No, the idea isn’t new, as Mr. Sproule points out, but the technology IS (relatively) new - and therein lies the dilemma.

Any reference to any person, once the information is posted anywhere on the PUBLIC Internet, will almost always get found by the likes of Google et-al.

A good example of this was Google’s CEO (too bad, so sad) whose home address got posted on the Web by none other than Google.

Nor is the use of single pseudonyms, or of multiple pseudonyms, say, with a free email service such as AOL or Hot Mail, do the trick BECAUSE the strategy of multiple identities for different online purposes, will tend to confuse even the persons who create their own pseudonyms in the first place.

What is required for Mr. Sproule’s particular purpose, since the “walled garden” concept is by now anachronism — is a private Internet for every person; and, this, happily, is rather handily done.

The way to do it is to construct a series of “purposeful” master channels, where a person can have multiple purposeful “identities”, all of which then redirect from personal pseudonyms inside level-three product, service and subject-related “domains”, such as, for example, , to a single “personal online domain” or “pod”.

The network to deal with exactly such an eventuality, meaning in effect an identity crisis for Internet end users, was constructed as far back as 1999 - and remains layered to this day across the public Internet.

Anyone who wants to know how “personal online domain services, or “pods” actually works, may contact me in care of my own personal online domain, or “pod”, which does exactly what Mr. Sproule evidently wants to see done: it protects my actual personal private information gleaned from multiple product, service and subject-specific activities on the public Internet — from the Googles of this world.

The Web address(es) for the purpose of this particular comment, even though one of my other Web addresses is posted at Adotas, can be either derick@adpods.com; or, to frustrate Google per se, derick@googlepod.com.

Try it for yourself and see how your query reaches me.

Posted by Derick Harris | 4:12 pm on September 29, 2006.

Privacy concerns are becoming a major social and legal issue these days.
Search engines play an important role in the whole equation.
The recent AOL Privacy Breach is just one example of what can happen if search engine user data are being stored.

 

Posted by Robert Beens | 7:16 pm on September 29, 2006.

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