Personat

Personat is a term used in discussions of digital identity to denote a formalized, machine-readable representation of a person that persists across platforms and contexts. The word blends “person” with a suffix implying representation or documentation, and it appears in academic and industry discourse as a way to distinguish a portable identity construct from a single platform account or an on-screen avatar.

Definition and components: A personat comprises core identifiers (legal or chosen name, birth date, or other identity markers), contact and eligibility data, a set of preferences and consent flags, credentials and attestations (such as verifiable credentials), and behavioral metadata that describes interactions across services. It is designed to support interoperable authentication, authorization, and personalized experiences while enabling data portability and user control over shared information.

Relationship to related concepts: A personat is distinct from a persona, which often refers to a user-facing personality or marketing profile, and from an avatar, which is primarily a graphical representation. It is akin to a digital twin in that it encodes attributes reflecting the real person, but its primary use is for identity and access management rather than simulation. In some frameworks, a personat can be implemented using decentralized identities (DID) and verifiable credentials to enable portable, user-controlled data.

Applications and risks: Potential use cases include cross-platform login, healthcare data sharing, financial services, and personalized offerings with explicit user consent. Risks include privacy invasion through data consolidation, credential theft, and impersonation. Governance, consent management, and robust security controls are central considerations in any implementation.

See also: identity, digital twin, persona, avatar, decentralized identifiers, verifiable credentials.