All of us are well aware of the recent "Apple iPhone" issue. Someone forgets a phone in a bar, it later explodes on the internet and reveals a corporations "IP"; well the story begins there - in a swift move, the Police and other agencies find the "interested parties". If you followed this story along, the most common clues were "facebook" and "social media", coupled with the digital identities of the humans and the computers.

In the Digital world, you have concerns about losing your identity, due to theft. But that applies only in certain categories of data, on the other hand the digital world also exposes your identity to a lot of people. You can change your name and fake every information about yourself, but the computers, the smartphones, the iPods etc have their own "identity" and you cannot change that particular identity, it is like the human "DNA" and will continue to provide clues in any situation - whether physical or cyber crime.

However the legalities in this case may turn out to be is not the focus here. In the futuristic world (5 years from now for discussion), the digital DNA will rule our lives more than ever. In that day and age, you can run but you cannot hide for long.

From a data practitioner perspective, this means more data to manage, and more applications to control. This is exciting and scary at the same time.