Classifying the data that build your online presence.

On Internet, many data exist that contribute to your Online Identity and your Online Reputation.

I believe that 4 types of data build your online presence.

1. The profile data that you provide on various platforms such as a user profile in a forum or your Facebook account, etc. These data will subsequently be partly available to everyone or to a limited number of people.
2. The contents that you publish as an author (like this blog), as a contributor into a publication (co-writing) or as a commenter on top of an existing content.
3. The indirect content that refers to your content (those from category 1). It is usually comments or contributions from others that refers to your writing and provide their view about your saying/writing.
4. The indirect profile information that your online friends write about you.

I intentionally discard all the data that are automatically generated and collected by external parties about your online activities (cookies, logging, etc). Why? Because by default they are not published to the crowd and so doesn’t fall under the 4 categories described above. As soon as they are published then they wouldfall under category 3 or 4. Michel Bénart, in the comments, proposed to group them as a fith category, the “grey data”, and I buy to his idea. The definition of it is:

…data collected during your online activity by third parties through cookies, beacons, and log connexions, to build your marketing profile…

What is your view on this data categorization ?

Doppelganger.name (French site) published a couple of articles that approach Online Identity and Online Reputation.

Here is how I woud map the 4 types 5 types of data. Online Identity is made of type 1. Online Reputation is made of type 3 and 4. I’m puzzled where to put type 2 and my god feel says Online Reputation. Type 5, being the grey data, are not strictly speaking visible Online Identity or visible Online Reputation.

Tell me what you think about this.