[Openid-specs-ipsie] change identity lifecycle to account lifecycle?

[Shannon Day]

Your instinct to question the use of "account" versus "identity" is astute,
as they carry significantly different meanings in the context of customer
or user data resolution. "Identity resolution" is a far more robust and
modern concept than "account resolution." It focuses on creating a single,
comprehensive view of a user across all touchpoints, while "account" is a
more limited term tied to a specific system.
Here is an opinionated breakdown of why "identity" is the more effective
and forward-thinking term:
The limitations of "account"
The term "account" is an artifact of older, siloed data systems. It is
specific to a single product, channel, or database.

   - System-specific: A customer may have an "account" for your mobile app,
   another for your e-commerce website, and a third for your loyalty program.
   "Account resolution" would only address issues within one of these silos at
   a time.
   - Limited scope: It fails to consider offline activities, device usage,
   or interactions that occur before a customer creates a formal account.
   - Fragmented experience: A focus on accounts leads to a fragmented
   understanding of the customer, which results in disjointed, impersonal, and
   sometimes repetitive or irrelevant communications.

The power of "identity"
Using the term "identity" signals a modern, customer-centric approach to
data management. It refers to the unique representation of a real-world
person, encompassing all their associated attributes and interactions.
Creates a unified customer view

   - Consolidated data: Identity resolution stitches together a user's
   disparate digital and offline records to create a "unified profile" or
   "golden record." This single source of truth includes emails, device IDs,
   website activity, and purchase history from across your entire ecosystem.
   - 360-degree perspective: With a unified profile, your company gains a
   complete, 360-degree view of the customer. You can see their journey from
   an anonymous website visitor to an authenticated user and beyond.

Drives personalization and value

   - Consistent experience: Knowing the customer's identity allows you to
   deliver seamless and consistent personalized experiences across all
   channels. This is what modern customers expect.
   - Improved marketing: Marketers can use a resolved identity to power
   more accurate segmentation, attribution, and personalization, which
   increases return on ad spend and loyalty.

Benefits beyond marketing

   - Better analytics: Analysts can understand customer behavior at the
   individual level, not just the session or device level.
   - Fraud detection: Financial institutions can use identity resolution to
   connect a customer's activity across systems, helping to detect fraudulent
   behavior more effectively.
   - Enhanced compliance: With a unified identity, you can centralize a
   user's consent and opt-out preferences, ensuring they are honored across
   all systems and helping you meet privacy obligations.

Your opinion is well-founded: Moving the conversation from "account
resolution" to "identity resolution" elevates the discussion from a
technical issue in one specific system to a strategic, business-wide
initiative that enables richer customer experiences, better data quality,
and more effective operations.

Shannon Day

On Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 12:28 PM Dick Hardt via Openid-specs-ipsie <
openid-specs-ipsie at lists.openid.net> wrote:

> https://github.com/openid/ipsie/pull/112
>
> On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 5:21 PM Dick Hardt <dick.hardt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey everyone
>>
>> I was reflecting on the account resolution discussion and questioned
>> using the term identity rather than account.
>>
>> Identity is an overloaded term in our industry. In my experience,
>> everyone has a slightly different idea of what they mean when they say the
>> term.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> /Dick
>>
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