One of the most famous cartoons of the internet age is Peter Steiner’s sketch of a dog sitting atop a chair in front of a desktop computer. The 1993 New Yorker drawing shows a dog telling its furry companion that “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
The original decades of the internet offered users high levels of anonymity and security through obscurity. Any person could go online, craft a new identity and join any social grouping of their preference.
Back then, virtual life did not cross real life in any meaningful way. That has changed. A monitor can longer veil your identity when online. Hiding your real identity is no longer feasible, creating a new challenge for internet users; digital identity safety.
Digital identity security is now a full-time job in the current iteration of the internet. A digital identity is a novel concept that refers to an online persona of an organization, individual, or electronic device. You can claim your digital identity for cyberspace use.
An organization can, for instance, claim diverse digital identities across numerous applications and communities. On the other hand, individuals can claim a compilation of their digital footprint. This may include their social media pages, date of birth, or images.
The importance of digital identities
A digital identity consists of personal data that can reveal your true identity. You can harness it under one identifier and project a compact digital persona. Forging and protecting your digital identity is a vital process as cyberspace users begin to re-orient themselves with the challenges of the modern internet.
The internet has become a place of transparency that makes personal data a commodity for trade. To this end, internet users have to continually weigh the cost and ramifications of sharing their private data on digital platforms. In addition, you have to protect your data from fraud, theft, breaches, hacks, and misuse.
To illustrate this point, have you googled your name lately? Your LinkedIn profile will appear at the very top of the search results. A good LinkedIn profile can be all that stands between you and your dream job, customers, or prospects.
LinkedIn profiles are a digital identifier of inherent, assigned, and accumulated attributes that can forge a trusted digital identity. An impressive web portfolio can help your clients identify you as a master of your craft. It will make you ‘searchable’ to new client bases and link you up to potential employers that use a search engine to locate talent.
A trusted digital identity can collect the fundamental credentials that verify your identity. For example, they may include your passport, national ID, or driving license details. Digital identity platforms will then tokenize these attributes and replace your identifiers with encrypted credentials to secure and verify your digital ID.
Digital IDs are vital in visitor management platforms and can provide privacy-enhanced e-commerce histories like a currency on the internet. A digital ID will help protect your privacy and will not share personal data with an online seller.
It also helps vendors, government services, and other public platforms match and verify your digital identity without physical proof. A unique digital identity has distinct features and traits that are irreplaceable and unique.
Why, in the future digital identities will be important to businesses
Businesses, on the hand, need digital identity verification as a crucial aspect of the digitalization process. Some of the benefits of a trusted digital identity for business include lowering the need for a trusted physical presence.
A trusted online presence is a convenient, cost-saving, fast, and efficient way to relate to your customers. Second, a trusted digital identity can lower fraud as more businesses embrace remote and work-from-home setups.
A unified digital identity will heighten your verification standards and ensure regulatory compliance in data access and privacy management. In addition, digital identity will protect and enhance brand reputation and consumer trust.
Digital ID processes can also positively impact your bottom line. It can support and enhance the delivery of customized services from private and public entities to individuals. Unfortunately, as per McKinsey Global Institute research, over a billion people globally do not have any form of legal identification.
Then while 6.6 billion have a form of legal identity, they cannot use it to access the digital private and public ecosystem. A digital ID can open doors to a wide range of e-commerce, banking, insurance, education, government services, and other critical services.
It can support social and civic empowerment and offer real economic gains. A digital ID program can increase institutional productivity, lower fraud, and save costs. It can, for instance, cut down on user onboarding costs by 90%.
It could also save over $1.6 trillion in global payroll fraud. A country that embraces a large-scale digital ID program can unlock a GDP value of up to 13% when they couple it with high usage and valuable use cases.
How domains help provide a digital identity
A digital identity can also help you distinguish your business in the ultra-competitive business world. However, a company website and logo are but the start of creating an authentic and unique brand experience. To create a unique, comprehensive, and impactful brand strategy using identity, think outside the dot.com box.
Combine your top-level domain (TLD) with meaningful second-level domain (SLD) names to engage and bring in more customers. As an illustration, memorable SEO-friendly redirects such as Xbox.games are industry-specific and memorable.
It expresses brand identity much better than an ordinary TLD such as .com. Additionally, a descriptive domain name can change the status quo between two competing businesses with similar brand names. It can also tell your brand story to your customers in the digital world.
Consequently, do not take the prefix or hyphen solution if your brand is seeking a compromise to the ideal one-word TLD legacy domain. Instead, use descriptive TLDs and access affordable, uncompromised, and clean domains that function as trusted digital identities and branding tools.
Savvy Fortune 500 companies embrace the descriptive top-level domain wave, with 94% owning multiple descriptive domains. In addition, smart startups such as builders.studio, and drink.haus also leverage the descriptive domain name to stand out from the nose and breakthroughs in a competitive business world.
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