The BBC just published an article about the risks of using social networking sites.

Unfortunately, it’s got the usual “don’t give out your personal information” spin on it.

The fact is that we should be able to give out our personal information free from worry about banking organisations allowing other people to open accounts or government departments letting them apply for documents in our names. The security hole is on their side of the problem, not on ours, and if they want to close it then the right way to do it is for the government (or the banks) to issue identity cards and for the banks (and the government) to use those as our canonical identities. Or, better yet, chip us all (like we do with pets), and use the chips as our identity; that’s much harder to copy, if they do it right.