QotW5: of heroes, villains, and wannabes...

Back in the old days, people are known as who and what they are. Probably only comic superheroes have alter-egos and double identities. Apparently that whole DC comic revolution has taken over the whole world. Today, everyone is Clarke Kent, Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker when they’re offline.

The Internet has far affected the way humans live today, to the extent of letting people become what they otherwise would not be able to. Hiding behind their monitors and keyboards, online identity is created, constructed, and altered by the users whichever way they want it. Once an online identity is forged, it becomes unique to its own in the sense that people recognize that particular identity like how we would recognize individuals in real world. Adoption of pseudonyms for emails, IM and forums will always have to go through authorization to avoid different people using the same “name”. Thus, user IDs became their names, email addresses became their home addresses, and their identity, something they want the world to know them as.

Identity plays a key role in virtual communities. In communication, which is the primary activity, knowing the identity of those with whom you communicate is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction. Yet in the disembodied world of the virtual community, identity is also ambiguous. Many of the basic cues about personality and social role we are accustomed to in the physical world are absent. [Donath, 1999] This makes it hard for people to tell if that person we are interacting with is really who and what he/she claims to be. While not everyone treats the internet as a form of escapism and see no point in lying about oneself, tons of others do just that. In the physical world there is an inherent unity to the self, for the body provides a compelling and convenient definition of identity… Though the self may be complex and mutable over time and circumstance, the body provides a stabilizing anchor. [Donath, 1999] With every identity comes a certain reputation, and in cases whereby physical manifestation does not exist, it is easy to create one. For example, apart from old folks who are totally foreign towards technology (and much less about the blogosphere), who else in Singapore does not know Xia Xue? In cyberspace, reputations can be easily made due to the high transfer of information. [Online Reputation, 2007] People who are actively involved in blogging and posting on forums will be recognized by other viewers for certain reasons, and they are often associated to the things they talk about. The more they talk about something, the more people associate them with that particular topic, and hence, reputation formed. As popularity increases, reputation tends to go up with it as there is tendency that recommendations towards that particular online entity would be made among viewers.

The very term "identity theft" is an oxymoron. Identity is not a possession that can be acquired or lost; it's not a thing at all. Someone's identity is the one thing about a person that cannot be stolen. The real crime here is fraud; more specifically, impersonation leading to fraud. [Schneier, 2005] The fact that online identity is so easy to assume poses a lot of problems for users. The fact that users with reputations be it in blogs, Friendster or MySpace will inevitably leak out very detailed personal information just do not help the situation. It is already very common today in social networking websites for people who are not so good-looking (no offence meant to anyone) themselves go around stealing other people’s pictures and putting them up on their own profiles, after which they will alter their personal particulars accordingly as well. When people who know the victims in person see this other profile with their photos on them, that is when the cat is out of the bag. In prevention to this problem, a lot of blog sites as well as social networking sites have stepped up security in attempt to protect their users. People can limit viewership by changing their account settings, i.e. to make it only viewable to selective individuals. But even this is not entirely secure as a lot of trust need to be placed upon the selective individuals, and trust is something that can be easily misused. Moreover, stealing of identity does not necessarily mean having to create a fake account. People who are capable enough can simply hack into the original accounts and make it their own. Just recently there have been people going around MySpace taking over people’s accounts, after which they forward vulgar messages to all the people in that account’s friends list. The administrator himself, Tom, has no other solutions for users but to try changing passwords from time to time.[Tom, 2006] Hence, as we can see, not only that the danger still exists, it is still pretty much a big issue to be dealt with.

Online identity has since empowered humans in many ways, but in the same manner it has handicapped us for the fact that it is very vulnerable. Moderation in how we use it is hence still the best possible solution in order for it to work for us, and not against us.



References:

Donath, J. M. (1996, Nov 12). Identity and deception in the virtual community. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community Web site: http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Online Reputation. (2007). Online Reputation. In Wikipedia [Web]. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_reputation

Schneier, Bruce (2005, April 15). Schneier on Security. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from Schneier on Security: Mitigating Identity Theft Web site: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/mitigating_iden.html

Tom (2006, October 19). Bulletins that you didn't post?. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from MySpace blog: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=6221&MyToken=67b4335a-c8ba-435d-bb7d-e9969592d7c4ML