The role of privacy - a sense of personal safety and security - is an important one in most societies. Gumpert and Drucker (1998) note that the privatization of public forums has made us more willing to give up privacy in other areas. While the use of CMC allows considerable physical privacy, this same forum eliminates digital privacy. That is, while we are isolated physically from one another during online communication, we are leaving an electronic footprint of our actions that is easily recorded and observed - our digital identity. The digital individual created by these electronic footprints (Kilger, 1994) can become an inadvertent identity. We may be defined by our interactions with electronic databases - through credit card transactions, online shopping, and government registrations (Clarke, 1994). Although online interactions may provide the illusion of privacy, we are in fact creating a persona of which we are only marginally aware.

Identity