This last weekend I was talking with a friend about Google, and the tracking of identity.  I blogged about Google, Identity and Privacy a few weeks back, and have been doing a lot of R&D in this area.  On Monday there was the uproar about the AOL leak of search queries
and how this data could be used to locate the person who was making the
queries.  What this article does not address is the
“undistinguished identity” that the person is revealing … information
about themselves that even they do not know.

The more that I discussed the issue with my friend, it started to
really get clear to me that my concerns about provacy and identity are
not as much my identity as most people think about it … but large
systems and companies that gain access to my undistinguished identity.

What do I mean by this?  To me, undistinguished identity
is all of my thoughts and behaviors that are completely a reaction to
stimulus around me.  Companies like Google are beginning to gain
vast amounts of information about me, what I search for, when I search
for it, and then have the ability to relate to to seemingly unrelated
events.

To me, it’s not just about companies knowing information about me that
I also know … it’s when they begin to know me, better than I know me.