I'm Me. Are You You? The Death Of Internet Anonymity.
Anonymity on the internet isn't working out. Phishing, spamming, spoofing, and all the other ways bad people wreck -- or steal -- your stuff is getting out of hand. The answer to a lot of it is TPM --Trusted Platform Module -- and it's already being built into computer chips:
The TPM chip was created by a coalition of over one hundred hardware and software companies, led by AMD, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Sun. The chip permanently assigns a unique and permanent identifier to every computer before it leaves the factory and that identifier can't subsequently be changed. It also checks the software running on the computer to make sure it hasn't been altered to act malevolently when it connects to other machines: that it can, in short, be trusted. For now, TPM-equipped computers are primarily sold to big corporations for securing their networks, but starting next year TPMs will be installed in many consumer models as well.
The "anonymous at any cost" crowd doesn't like this because all their stolen downloads and unlicensed software might not work anymore. You'll just have to go back to old-fashioned shoplifting, while the rest of us sleep easy at night. Let's See Some ID, Please.
