I wonder what claimID is all about. It seems to me that you can create an id on their site, and link to other resources of yours. What’s the point?
1. You help other people find stuff by you, in a portfolio kind of way.
2. If you use it as intended with a single identity however then basically you’re helping everybody else to track you.
3. You’re making yourself more transparent. Unfortunately, the operation is not symmetric à la TransparentSociety: You’re not making anybody else transparent. Nobody watches the watchers.
4. There’s no inverse operation: You cannot *disclaim* anything. (”No, this IRC log is *not* about me!”) It’s a one-way street. You can’t use it to hide parts of yourself. No cloaking.
5. So when they say you should “reclaim some power back from the search engines” ¹ what they are actually saying is “selectively helping them”.
I don’t like it.
The problem they are solving is not something that bothers me (link all my stuff to my name). They don’t solve the problem that does bother me (asymmetric & unvoluntary transparency).
#Privacy #Web