The truth of the popular statement "everyone is online now" gets more grounded with each day that passes. Daily, millions of people come online to carry out different activities ranging from researching an academic topic, to shopping for new items, to dropping comments on social media platforms and even carrying out different financial transactions. The more transactions an individual carries out online, the more digital footprints they leave behind.  

Problems Of Current Identity Management Systems  

Most online transactions require that individuals disclose specific personal information before they can proceed to access services. For instance, before financial transactions can be carried out on platforms such as Amazon Pay, PayPal and Google Wallet, among others, users are always required to input their sign up/login details -- i.e., financial and personal details. Thus, every time an individual discloses this information, it gets stored on numerous internet databases. As such, digital clones of one and the same individual spring into existence across these different platforms. This also exposes a lot of security issues. Thus, as evidenced by the Equifax hack, gaining access to a major database exposes all the personal information of users and exemplifies the high vulnerability of the current system.