Identifiers are an essential component of online communication. Email addresses and instant messenger screen names are two of the most common online identifiers. This dissertation focuses on the ways that social, technical and policy factors affect individual’s behavior with online identifiers. For example, people may separate personal and professional spheres by communicating with separate email and IM accounts. Individuals also maintain different identifiers for technical reasons, such as difficulties in configuring application settings or from corporate security restrictions placed on communications.
Research for this dissertation was completed in two parts. The first part describes an interview-based study of forty-four individuals drawn from two populations. The second part examines identifier management mechanisms from two large consumer services, Google and Yahoo!, and two widely deployed protocols, OpenID and OAuth. The interview study examines how individuals segment and integrate aspects of their lives, with online identifiers. The first population is drawn from employees of a financial service firm with substantial constraints on communication in the workplace. The second population is drawn from a design firm with minimal constraints on communication. The two populations provide the opportunity to explore the social, technical, and policy issues that arise from diverse communication needs, uses, strategies, and technologies. The second portion focuses on the mechanisms that Google and Yahoo! provide to individuals for managing their identifiers and two protocols for managing identifiers across many services; OpenID—a standard for user authentication in web browsers and OAuth—a standard for managing authorization in browsers and applications.
This research contributes to our understanding of the ways that identifiers shape online self-representation and communication. Specifically, interview data highlight the ways in which individuals’ preferences for the creation and management of identifiers conflict with external factors. These conflicts lead to frustration, arbitrary decisions, and complicated management issues. This thesis concludes with recommendations for system designers and policy implementers.