A Book & A Beer | J.W. Martin

THE IDENTITY GAME
by Nora A. Draper

New York University Press
January 22, 2019

From Goodreads:

The successes and failures of an industry that claims to protect and promote our online identities What does privacy mean in the digital era? As technology increasingly blurs the boundary between public and private, questions about who controls our data become harder and harder to answer. Our every web view, click, and online purchase can be sold to anyone to store and use as they wish. At the same time, our online reputation has become an important part of our identity–a form of cultural currency. The Identity Trade examines the relationship between online visibility and privacy, and the politics of identity and self-presentation in the digital age. In doing so, Nora Draper looks at the revealing two-decade history of efforts by the consumer privacy industry to give individuals control over their digital image through the sale of privacy protection and reputation management as a service. Through in-depth interviews with industry experts, as well as analysis of media coverage, promotional materials, and government policies, Draper examines how companies have turned the protection and promotion of digital information into a business. Along the way, she also provides insight into how these companies have responded to and shaped the ways we think about image and reputation in the digital age. Tracking the successes and failures of companies claiming to control our digital ephemera, Draper takes us inside an industry that has commodified strategies of information control. This book is a discerning overview of the debate around who controls our data, who buys and sells it, and the consequences of treating privacy as a consumer good.

I was provided a free digital copy of The Identity Game in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Not quite what I expected. I thought it was going to unlock the secrets and tricks that magic computers use to figure out how a teenage girl is pregnant based on buying 7 things from Target. Or how I can speak the word ‘shoes’ within range of any cell phone or computer and suddenly all the online ads I see are for shoes. 

Most of this book seems to be the history of the internet and the niche companies that ran beside it offering services protecting people’s privacy. The internet would change, and these companies would change. Rinse and repeat.

I realize non-fiction isn’t going to have spaceships suddenly attacking in chapter 13, but this was pretty dry stuff. There was no real sense of friction. No conspiracies, or great evils like with books about the food giants. Companies were finding ways to pay to get information about internet users, which was used to advertise to them. This has been happening for decades, even before the internet. Companies sold contact information to other companies, who would then call these people and try to sell them things. 

In today’s world, TMI is the norm. We’re putting it out there by the pile and we’re doing it voluntarily. Is the college kid who just posted 8 pictures of him drinking and smoking pot concerned about his email address being sold to several companies who will send him junk email? Probably not.

If anything, there were some tips in there for keeping your online persona clean and free of anything that can came back to bit you in the future. But honestly, it was all pretty common sense stuff. If you posted pics or a confession of yourself doing a crime, you could be arrested. I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time I’m doing a B&E on Facebook Live.

I suppose what I was really looking for, especially with a title like ‘The Identity Game’ was the methods people use to steal identities, and how to avoid that. If that was in this book somewhere, I completely missed it. 

Fun fact about this post: If you’re ever at the heart of something controversial, don’t delete all your accounts and disappear from the net. This is the worst thing to do and allows the ‘story’ to run out of control.