I've talked a bit about identity in the past, but more from the 'People are more than their credit gives them credit for' stance. But now I'm looking at identity from a new angle:

How do I say "This is REALLY me" online without giving out more information than I'm comfortable with?

The vicious circle is illustrated above. I want to have a unique identifier, but I certainly don't want to share my SSN or my Credit Card info with anyone (unless I know it absolutely necessary). With the amount of spam I receive these days, I'm even reticent to share my email address, even though it seems to be the most innocuous.

There are a few companies out there trying to solve this issue right now, like Opinity and Sxip, but we are still a ways away from doing this.

Now we are facing this issue. During the initial alpha tester phase, it was a recurring issue that we required emails to be entered to become the unique identifiers for each person:

ISSUE #1. Some people have multiple email addresses. Which one do you use? What if you train a face/person's photo with one email address and then someone else trains that face/person's photo with the other address? Well, what happens right now is that your training doesn't intersect - it's alot of work for both of you.

ISSUE #2. Some people don't have email addresses. Babies. Grandpa. Your crazy cousin who refuses to get online. Make something up? It seems like a waste of time.

ISSUE #3. You don't always know the addresses of the people in your photos. Maybe you wish you did. Maybe you would even share the photo with them. But there were a zillion people at that event and either you failed to collect the email of everyone you met or they didn't have a card.

ISSUE #4. There is no way in hell you want to enter yours or your friends' email addresses into a system. You don't trust the Privacy Policy or User Agreement as far as you can throw it.

It's a catch-22. Without using email, the system can become inaccurate. All of the 'Tara Hunt's in the world who get recognized as that go into my central training set and mess my accuracy levels up. Even keeping it localized (between connected people) may be an issue for some people. Imagine if your name is Steve Smith. AND when you want to find yourself in the sea of photographs out there, it gets even more complicated.

With email, there are obvious problems (see above again, but I'm sure you can come up with more).

Right now, our team is in the boardroom, going over scenario after scenario of 'how do we deal with this identity issue?' If anyone else has a simple solution, feel free to offer it.

I've received alot of questions and comments about the FBI, etc. (don't worry, we're not in any way, shape or form associated). They have identity down pat. They own your social security numbers, your finger prints, your government issued ID cards (Driver's licences, passports, etc.). I'm certain those airport security cameras and the film at the DMV is kept on record. We're not that.

We want to solve a specific issue...searching digital photographs. Period. We are trying to create something that can allow you to either just search your own collection, you and your friends' collections or the entire public collection. Who knew that solving a basic problem could raise such fundamental questions?

::: oh...and the alpha test is going very well btw...the testers seem genuinely pleased (some ecstatic) with the face recognition capabilities. It's just the identity issues that keep popping up....

....hmmmmmmm...

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