There are many schools of thought about what a digital identity represents and the uses for digital identities. Each has a different taxonomy to describe the different types and characteristics of those identities.

The school of thought related to the personal data ecosystem, personal data stores, and self-sovereign identity (see Searls, Windley, Blakley, Cameron, et al) uses at least two major categories, paraphrased and expanded below:

Administrative identity information: labels used to keep track of entities, their information records and the services they use. These labels are controlled by the issuer. A common example today are email addresses used as login identifiers.

Self-sovereign identity information: information about the entity that is controlled by the entity and released on the authority of that entity. Self-sovereign identity information may include identifiers or attributes. Self-sovereign identity information can be used to assert facts about the self without subservience to a central authority.

Digital Identity Information Record:

• The information records containing information about an Entity that can be used to attempt to identify or distinguish the Entity from other Entities in a population

• The Digital Identity may or may not enable unique distinguishment of an Entity in a population

• Can contain personal information, personally identifiable information, identity attribute information.

• The record may also contain, secondarily, non-personal or non-identity information. It is uncommon to see ‘pure’ Digital Identity Information Records because the records contain information related to the purposes of the record holder. The main point being that the record has a direct association to the Entity.

• Can also contain information about relationships and bindings