Mike Schanzer's List: DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS

We should talk about the ownership of this (private) trail information. It is  clear that the user should own his own profile, whether it is his surfing trail,  credit card trail or whatever. A user's profile is also his weblog, the comments  on someone else's weblog, his music list, his SNS-profiles, FOAF file, anything  that he does, writes, speaks, etc. The more explicit this information, the  better is the profile. Only the user knows his own profile, not what companies  mined in his trail. Take responsibility for your profile.

So be in control again. A user should make this profile explicit, as some  users are already doing in their weblog. Make sure that this profile represents  yourself (or one of your personae) or otherwise the world might invent your  profile and they might guess wrong. And publish this profile on your own  website, weblog, whatever. The user becomes a writer and a publisher. This  profile information could be published under some Personal Commons arrangement,  i.e. personal information that is available to the world.

This user profile has value for companies. Companies can access this profile  under a Personal Commons license in a standardised and legal way. Then they can  adapt their interaction with a user accordingly. They might even give discount  if an user profile is available, as it makes their live cheaper (less marketing  cost). This profile can also be the basis of the various Social Networking  Services, which can then focus on their business: networking. A user's wishlist  and transaction trail is no longer available to just Amazon, but all book  shops.

Once this profile has more value than the trail we leave behind, the user is  back in control. Next step will be to regulate access, so we know who had access  and what the profile was used for. And hopefully we can come up with some  enforcement in the even longer term.