Who am I? Am I more than just an online profile to you?

Yeah! turns out I am multiple online profiles.

Hi I’m Alex Escalante, but I go by many user-names, mainly Alex Esc. as a wired abbreviation of my real name, the “esc” has a really computer-y & Internet-y feel to it so I went with it.

Recently I decided to change all my user-names to alex-esc if possible, if the name was already in use I will choose one with an underscore or a point instead of a dash, but regardless of my Internet identity was all over the place.

How can you be sure that notascam@gmail.com is really a Nigerian prince? can you trust anyone online? even random bulletin board members, Facebook profiles or journalists? Your friends and family are easy to trust online because we know them face to face. Your buddy gave you his phone number, so you know you are talking with him and him only. But on the Internet you don’t know if a random user is who he claims to be without some kind of verification, this is what some platforms like keybase atempt to solve.

Keybase is a platform that verifies Internet users via access to physical devices and social media accounts, for example if you head over my keybase profile you will see that whoever alexesc is he has access to Alex Escalante’s website, GitHub account, Reddit account, Twitter handle and two physical devices, now the case for my identity is very compelling since I have that keybase profile to prove it. I could easily fool you that some twitter handle is the real me, but it gets harder and harder to prove that I am the owner of a twitter account, and a website, and a reddit, and an email address, and that the owner of all those accounts is the same person. That’s what keybase is for.

Other Internet accounts

I hereby declare the end of my flesh and the beginning of my bits, I will not conform to my earthly identity as the whole in itself but as a means to the goal of achieving the actual me.