Ben Gross, in his doctoral research at University of Illinois, has found that people are dealing with far more identifiers, such as email addresses, than they realize. Gross talks about the implications these identifiers have for people's privacy, security, productivity, and quality of life. Discussing recent issues of privacy on the internet, he considers technologies that track identity and tools help control how identity is tracked.

Companies widely misuse identifiers, which leads to security and regulatory problems.  Often, these abuses result from identity systems that people find restrictive or hard to use. On the web, people are identified by many types of information, including information about their network address, computer, web browser, web history, and location. And, Gross says, any two sources of information about a given person are usually enough for unique identification, which means you can never really be anonymous on-line.

Gross talks about a number of privacy issues and methods in use to capture, store, and use identity information. Tools for modifying HTTP headers, blocking ads, editing and deleting cookies, and anonymous browsing allow people to uncover and control their identity data.

Gross also talks about emerging identification technologies, like geolocation, and answers audience questions about how people deal with corporate regulation and compliance, how user experience around identity and privacy can be improved, and how he protects his own privacy.