22 August, 2006 - 10:10am

I recently came across a disturbing post about a professor who was the unfortunate victim of online identity theft with an unusual twist -- not for the intention of financial gain -- but rather to discredit him. Regardless if you agree with Dr. Myers' personal beliefs, activities by imposters like this are wrong and could be prevented with Identity 2.0.

This problem appears to becoming increasingly common, i.e. on MySpace, Xanga, and other social networking sites. Interestingly, Robert Scoble addressed this topic back in December 2003 suggesting that for him it's not an issue because he says that he tracks his online identity like a hawk. For someone as web savvy as Scoble, that's no doubt quite doable. However for the average blogger, that's likely not feasible. Hence the need for Identity 2.0 and being able to prove who you are online through third party signed assertions.