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In Linked Data, the use of owl: sameAs is ubiquitous in ‘inter-linking’data-sets. However, there is a lurking suspicion within the Linked Data community that this use of owl: sameAs may be somehow incorrect, in particular with regards to its interactions with inference. In fact, owl: sameAs can be considered just one type of ‘identity link,’a link that declares two items to be identical in some fashion. After reviewing the definitions and history of the problem of identity in philosophy and knowledge representation, we outline four alternative readings of owl: sameAs, showing with examples how it is being (ab) used on the Web of data. Then we present possible solutions to this problem by introducing alternative identity links that rely on named graphs.