Shedding Your Identity in the Digital Age
is the title of a new article in the December 2009 issue of Wired Magazine. For one month, Evan Ratliff shed his digital identity and tried to disappear. Wired offered $5000 to the first person who could locate him, say the password “fluke” and take his picture within the one month contest period. The premise of the contest was simple: “how hard is it to vanish in the digital age? The article chronicles his adventures on the run, and the phenomena it created on Twitter. Using the hashtag #vanish, contest participants were “tweeting” up to 600 tweets a day as they shared clues and personal information about Evan Ratliff (such as his middle name, a common question of private investigators).
I recommended you pick up the print edition of the article while still available, as it is better than the online version. Otherwise, check out the online version here.
USA Privacy Research 