Lately I’ve been discussing three human tendencies we should take into account in designing identity-enabled systems: new-relationship energy, the efficiency imperative, and the self-revelation imperative. I’ve put aside the privacy imperative (essentially the opposite of self-revelation) because it seems more interesting to discuss challenges to privacy by examining the forces working against it.
I just got a handy reminder that whatever privacy imperative we have is, at least in part, learned rather than innate. In going through a storage-roomful of boxes to stock some new bookcases, I came across a calligraphy instruction book that’s more than 20 years old. I’d gotten it second-hand, and its previous owner had claimed ownership of the book and practiced his italic in one swoop by writing his name and his social security number inside the front cover…
And his social security number is?
:-) I actually did try it/him in Google but nothing turned up… I’ll be good and forgo sharing it, on the theory that only the Lifelock guy really wants to spread that number around these days.