More about Identities

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What is an Identity?

An Abine identity is a set of personal information, such as a name and email address, as well as a set of privacy settings, such as "Make me a new email address".

You already use different sets of information on different sites and in different situations, for instance on Linkedin.com vs. Facebook. Abine takes what you are already doing and makes it more convenient and more powerful, by using the information and settings in an Identity to auto-fill registration forms and checkout forms.

You can set up identities with the different sets of information, such as your primary info, your work identity (with your work address and email), and different privacy settings. For some sites (like your banks and travel sites) you'll want to use most of your personal information. For many others, you can choose to provide less information or easily keep your home, work, and other data separated.

When you are on a page with a registration or checkout form Abine will show you a list of your identities and you can easily fill the form with the information you want just by clicking on an Identity.

Why do I already have more than one identity?

You can make a many identities as you want, such as for work or school or for your family. If you used the Wizard to set up Abine you should have three identities already, based on the information you provided to the wizard:

Me This identity is used for sites where you want to use all your personal information. Protected This identity is set up to use your name and address, but with privacy settings that give each form a unique shielded email that will forward to your primary email address. Private This identity is for when you want to leave the minimum of information. It doesn't fill your name and auto-generates a unique email and username.

The Identities Tab

The Identities Tab is where you can can see and manage all your identities. From here you can add new identities to Abine, or change the data used by your current identities. You can also change the privacy settings any of your identities.

• Privacy Settings
  Each identity can have a different default privacy settings to control username and password generation, as well as browsing privacy options.

• Identity Data
  This is the data that will be used for form-filling when you pick an identity. You can edit this data or delete the entire identity.

• "used at"
  This is list of sites where you've used this identity. There is a list of sites where you have used this identity to register.

• Switch Identity
  This switches your active identity. It is like having different profiles or users for your browser. When you switch your identity you will switch to an entirely new set of cookies and open tabs. When you switch back the cookies and open tabs will be restored.




Privacy Settings

Each identity can have a different set of privacy settings. The settings control the information that is auto-filled in registration forms. The table below describes the effects of each setting.





Auto-shield email address when registering.
Auto-fill email addresses with shielded emails forwarding to the email address of this identity. You can control the email address on the "My Shielded Info" tab.

Auto generate password when registering.
This setting will auto-fill password fields on registration forms with 8-character random passwords using mixed case and numbers and letters. This password will be automatically saved with your account information when you register. You can view the password on the account card in "My Sites and Accounts".

Auto generate usernames when registering.
This setting will auto-fill username fields on registration forms with a mixture of your username and the site name. It's handy for making a quick username you don't have to think about and won't match directly to outer sites.

Anonymous Browsing Options
This link will take you to preferences page where you can set this identity to use a free proxy server to mask your IP address while browsing or to use googlesharing to mask google searches. These options apply to the active identity




Creating and Editing Identities

Click on "Create" or "Edit" to create a new identity or edit the data in an existing identity. An editing window will open where you can enter data for your name, title, contact info, etc. You can also delete an entire identity from this screen. If you change the email address or phone number for an identity, your shielded email addresses and phone numbers will be updated automatically once you've validated your new information (click the confirm link in your email and call the validation phone number).




Switching Identities

This switches your active identity. It is like having different profiles or users for your browser. When you switch your identity you will switch to an entirely new set of cookies and open tabs. When you switch back the cookies and open tabs will be restored.

Note: If you have more than one browser window open, only the first window will get switched, and the others will be closed.




How to Switch Identities

To switch IDs, open the Identity Tab, and select the identity that you want to switch into. Above the privacy controls will be a link that says "





It will take just a few moments to switch (depending on how many cookies you have). A progress bar will show you what's happening.






What's really happening when I switch Identities?

When you switch identities Abine will swap all the cookies, LSOs, flash cookies and DOM objects between your two identities.

First, we gather these items up and store them in an encrypted blob tagged with your first identity. Your cookies are now actually gone as far as your browser is concerned.

Then we grab the cookie blob associated with the identity you are switching into, decrypted it and put everything in place. This includes opening the same tabs you had open for this identity when you switched away the last time. Note that your sessions at webmail or other sites may have expired.