Uploaded October 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Our online identities are quite distinct from our actual human identities. In some cases the internet doesn’t know anything about us, and so we are invisible online. In other cases, our human names don’t identify us well online, and so our identities begin to merge with others with identical names. In other cases, even if we can be uniquely identified, the information that the internet "knows" about us is incomplete—or worse, inaccurate. Like any human acquaintance, how the internet knows us is a function of what it knows about us.
Credits: Talking: Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo). Producing: Greg Bunyea (Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo).
Part of the internet-class.org online internet course. A blue Systems Research Group (https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu) production.
Our online identities are quite distinct from our actual human identities. In some cases the internet doesn’t know anything about us, and so we are invisible online. In other cases, our human names don’t identify us well online, and so our identities begin to merge with others with identical names. In other cases, even if we can be uniquely identified, the information that the internet "knows" about us is incomplete—or worse, inaccurate. Like any human acquaintance, how the internet knows us is a function of what it knows about us.
Credits: Talking: Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo). Producing: Greg Bunyea (Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo).
Part of the internet-class.org online internet course. A blue Systems Research Group (https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu) production.
