Patent ID: 8032562

Claim:
At a computing device in a distributed system, a method of assisting a user in managing the user's shared persona on a request-by-request basis by automatically presenting the user with an interface through which the user can interact with to select an amount of identity information the user is willing to share with a specified entity, the method comprising acts of: the computing device receiving a request for a user having identity information accessible to the computing device to share the user's identity information with a third party; in response to the request, automatically displaying a new user interface to the user at the computing device, the new user interface enabling the user to selectively control which of the user's identity information to share with the third party in response to the request, the new user interface including: a plurality of contact information labels; a list of a plurality of identity items which are sharable with the third party, the plurality of identity items corresponding to the user's identity information as identified by the plurality of contact information labels; an item-by-item selection mechanism comprising interactive graphical objects, including at least one of check boxes, radio buttons or highlighting elements, by which each of the plurality of identity items for the user is independently selectable and deselectable, thereby allowing the user to, from the new user interface, select any combination of the plurality of listed identity items for sharing with the third party, including a plurality of items, and while continuing to display each of the plurality of contact information labels and each of the plurality of identity items for the user; and receiving input from the user selecting or deselecting one or more identity items from the list of the plurality of identity items; based on the user input, sending the user's identity information corresponding to the selected one or more identity items to the third party; accessing a log file that includes shared information about the one or more entities, including the third party, with whom the user has shared one or more specified identity items, as well as information about the one or more entities that includes at least an address associated with each of the one or more entities; receiving a request from the user to update the one or more specified identity items with edited information; automatically, in response to the user request to update and based on the shared information in the log file, displaying a list of the one or more entities that have received the one or more specified identity items; prompting the user to identify one or more identified entities of the one or more listed entities to have the edited information sent to; and sending the edited information to the one or more identified entities using at least the address associated with each of the one or more entities.