Identity management throughout one's whole life

Identity management has to comprise all areas of life throughout one's whole lifetime to gain full advantages, e.g., ease-of-use for all kinds of digital services, authenticity and authorisation, reputation and user-controlled privacy.

To help laying the foundations for identity management applicable to people's whole life, we describe the formation of digital identities happening numerous times within one's physical life, i.e., their establishment, evolvement and termination, and derive building blocks for managing these digital identities from the needs of individuals and of society.

The identity attributes occurring and developing can be categorised according to their sensitiveness and the security requirements individuals have regarding them. We give an analysis of the sensitivity of identities and their attributes w.r.t. privacy and security both from a legal and individual's perspective. This leads to how systems for identity management throughout one's whole life should be designed using the building blocks derived.