Understanding Digital Identity & How It Works

Your digital identity helps you prove that you are who you say you are online, even if you can't provide paper documents to prove your claim. 

Let's give an example.

You're driving your car, and unfortunately, you're speeding. The police officer who pulls you over asks you to confirm that you own the vehicle and are qualified to drive it. Your identity documents, such as your license and proof of registration, help you satisfy the officer's questions.

But what happens if you're interacting online? You can't use your paper documents to do the same work. A digital identity would cover those requirements.  

What makes up a digital identity?

Information that exists online and identifies an individual, a company, or an organisation is a digital identity. Almost everyone has one. 

Just seven per cent of Americans don't use the internet. Internet usage globally increases each year as well. Each time we're online, we're creating the components that make up digital identities. They include:

• Usernames
• Passwords
• The purchases we make
• The searches we conduct

If companies store data about you online, that could also be part of your digital identity. Medical records, banking records, and more could be part of the data set, especially if they're connected to something readily identifiable, such as your name or your Social Security number.

How do you attain a digital identity?

In some cases, your records start with formal issuances. You hit a page filled with blank entry fields to fill in. Once you complete the form, the page or company that created the page issues you a digital identity.

Each time you come back to that same organisation, you'll move through a series of steps.

• Authentication: You'll prove that you are who you say you are. Typically, that involves entering a username and password. More than 80 per cent of data breaches start with passwords. Therefore, companies may ask for another factor, such as a fingerprint or a code they send you via SMS, to strengthen the boundaries against hackers. 
• Authorisation: Once the system ensures that you truly are who you say you are, you get certain rights within the system. You might see your past purchase history at an online retailer, for example, or you could get the chance to save files to a shared folder at your workplace. 
• Identifier: Once the system knows who you are, it tracks the work you do within the system and attaches it to your name. 

Resources, such as image files, also have digital identities. The very first person who puts the resource out on the web should provide that identity. But sometimes, those pieces of content get a name when they enter a library. For example, if you've pulled a file from Wikipedia, and you've noticed a file name associated with it, you've encountered this form of digital identity.

How Are Digital Identities Catalogued?

Giving every person and file a name isn't helpful if someone doesn’t collect and code those resources in some way. Library resources can help to do the work, and plenty of them exist.

A few common versions include:

• Digital Object Architecture. This system was designed to move away from the idea that the internet is organised around websites (and hosts) to the idea that the internet is organised around digital objects