Identity Crisis
I am who I am, but can I prove it?
Today I decided to start the gym. I chose the option closest to home and decided to get a free pass to see how it is, before decide for a full membership. Here I go with pass on hand (on cell phone actually), my gym clothes and lots of energy! Arriving there.. “Hi. Can I have your id?” Well, the pass says to bring the pass printed or on the cell phone, there is nothing about id there, but ok. I can come back later, maybe. Well, there is an option. To get the pass I need the ID but if I want to start today I can get the membership and that’s ok.
Wait, wait… to get for free I need to identify myself but to get the FULL membership it is ok..?? That’s weird and this occasion made me remember a not so old discussion I would like to share with you.
Recently there was a huge discussion on social networks about the website Tudo Sobre Todos. This website allows the collection of data from Brazilians such as: gender, full name, date of birth, full address, CPF (the registration number used for tax payment and many other public and bank services), parents and relatives, companies and societies the person participates, alternative addresses, and neighbours. Yes, all this for a good price.
Brazilians went crazy!! Destroy this website! They are selling my informations!! Ai, ai… the website works fully on open data. Yes, open data! I decided to do a test. I looked for a random person on Facebook (one of those complaining) and I got almost all information. I got even number of the apartment, and everything just searching on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. People include information about who are their relatives as well as gender, name, and birthdate on their Facebook profile; the data about companies and societies is on LinkedIn; the CPF can be found online if the person did any public exam for University or public employment; and the address may be found if the person had anything related to a dispute of house or they have the house registered in their names. Everything public, everything there. It is only needed to look for it and start to match the informations, do some disambiguation and that’s it. With lots of data, the neighbours is something quite easy to get. And in this sense I clap for the website, they did it and it is not illegal, because the data is public. They just created the Database and still get the rights for the data because of that.
What is interesting on that is.. how can I prove I am myself if everyone else can have all my data!?
In the very old times I would need to say I am daughter of someone, grandaughter of someone else, leaving in East/West/North/South of somewhere, and then maybe, someone will believe in me and/or recognize me. Later, important people had their rings to show their identity while others, who cares about who they are. Centuries later we started to have birth certificate, usually given by the church, and another certificate given to the family when the person died. Then we started to sign documents, and suddenly there were a sort of numbers that, in combination with more information, could prove that we were ourselves. All those methods of identification were based more or less in the idea that only the person has a given set of information (ring, specific number, etc). But and now that everybody can have all information about someone? How to prove identity?
In the era of Open Data what can we use as proof that we are who we are? From the example of the gym, I think the money may work as identification once again.