Catch Me If You Can

[Update #1: 04/03/2007

A blog post with same title lead to the arrest of a 16-year old fugitive from a juvenile detention center]

Think of a word which describes your online identity uniquely. Run a Google Search. Include all the similar results which are omitted as default. What’s the result count? If you found it surprisingly high, probably you can appreciate what the following discourse is about.

Some of us LIVE on the Web. It is primary source of ‘communication’ and ‘information’. With the exponential increase of Web 2.0 services, ‘collaboration’ has joined the buzzword list and they together form the Holy Trinity. Each and every time we deal with any of these entities in online space, there is a trail being left.

Participation in ‘collaboration’ requires us to ‘Register’ on the site of the service provider before we can start our contribution. Each time we register, there arises a need to provide a unique identity (login id). When Web was a new phenomenon in our country, it was easy to get unique logins by using our first and second name together. But with the explosion of internet connectivity, it is difficult to do so, especially for the common names and surnames.

Facing this problem, we start inventing login ids - the flamboyant, zara hat ke ones. The success and ease of getting a unique login with any such formulation makes this a repetitive habit. And why try new combinations when one jazzy identity can suffice every time and also saves the trouble of remembering different login ids for different sites.

So, most probably than not, if you are an avid ‘collaborator’, you will have the same login id for most of your favorite and not-so-favorite hangouts. Almost same will be the case for password and hint questions to these logins. You get the drift?

A silent surfing on Web can at best tracked by your network administrator. There are other ways as well, but this is assuming you are not a hot target that somebody would like to invest resources in tracking your surfing habits. So, given the privacy policies in general, just visiting some sites, sending some mails and reading movie reviews isn’t going to hurt. The trouble begins when you start leaving markers – questions on forums, reviews on products / services, posting links to downloads, answering queries on topics. Doing all this requires you to identify yourself with your unique identity. When the Search Engines of the world prowl the Web, they sniff up all that.

So running a search on the unique identity will show in a nutshell which communities you visit and what your contribution is. A 10 to 15 minute reading and surfing of the search results can potentially let anyone know your likings, views, habits, hang-outs, and in unlucky cases more damaging personal information. You may have never bargained for this. But, your privacy can lay threadbare. If you have such a unique identity, try running a search and see for yourself what potential information is available about you for anyone to have access to. And if somehow somebody cracks a password in any one of these sites, it will be just a cakewalk to hack all the other accounts.

The forums are right in their own when they ask for identifying us before we post anything. This ensures that at least a unique person can be identified for any unwanted posting and flamebait. However, this very thing also allows the Search bots to capture the information. So, what is the solution? Making new identities each time, generating new passwords, remembering all the matches for all the sites? That’s a tough task in the current scenario of relentless surfing. You are saved only if your unique identity has yet not been identified as being ‘unique’ by people who know you. But how long will that last? Sharing blogs, filling social networking profiles, instant message ids, or a trivial identity created in more carefree times of school/college carried to this day forward can all leak that unique identity to an observant eye.

If you find a solution for yourself which works universally, do post it here. If I am missing on any existing solution, it would be great if you can point it here.