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Digital persona

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Digital Persona (DP) is the electronic representation, an information model, of an individual's public personality based on and maintained by transactions or secondary information, and is intended for use as a proxy for the individual. The term was created and defined first by Clarke(1). Another mention of a related concept is in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (ISBN 0-553-38095-8). He refers to the term Avatar, a Sanskrit word meaning incarnate. An individual could assume several Avatars by assembling needed attributes. In real life, the DP, can be adjusted to reflect different levels of exposure.

Often this DP exists unbeknownst to most individuals. Moreover, many do not even know that this persona is often traded among the various users. People are unaware of the increasing extent of data exchange among organizations. Sometimes the exchange may be carried on at the level of cohort groups and at other times at the level of individual consumers.

1. R. Clarke "The digital persona and its application to data surveillance," Information Society (10:2), 1994, pp. 77.