Thursday, February 22, 2007

QotW5: Online Identity





Internet has allowed for a unique form of interaction: group or “many-to-many” interaction, unfettered by geography. Part of the attraction of CMC is that it allows participants to separate their physical selves from their writing and actions online (2004). Thus to be a part of this computer mediated communication and participate in discussions, one must create an online identity.

An online identity is a social identity that network users establish in online communities. Although some people prefer to use their real names online, most Internet users prefer to identify themselves by means of pseudonyms, which reveal varying amounts of personally identifiable information. In some online contexts, including Internet forums, MUDs, IRC, instant messaging, and massively multiplayer online games, users can represent themselves visually by choosing an avatar, an icon-sized graphic image. As other users interact with an established online identity, it acquires a reputation, which enables them to decide whether the identity is worthy of trust. (Online Identity, 2007).

One such online identity I created was on Orkut. Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called "communities") of users (Orkut, 2007).



Some features of Orkut include rating your friends’ system where Users have options to rate their friends in the order of "Best Friends", "Good Friends", "Friends", "Acquaintances" and "Haven't met". A member can view profile details of people only on his/her network, Orkut allows anyone to visit anyone's profile, unless a potential visitor is on your "Ignore List". Importantly, each member can also customize his/her profile preferences and can restrict information that appears on their profile from their friends and/or others (not on the friends list).

People are always bothered about what other people think about them. Reputation is the most important key for growing social relationships. If one does not have a good reputation in the market, they will be isolated and not associated with. Orkut has to bother about its users’ and its own reputation too.

Reputation online can be earned by increasing number of positive remarks on your profile. On Orkut, anyone can scrap or leave a message, for anyone. People leave comments, feelings, thoughts and ideas on various subjects, on each other’s accounts. The more the number of fans of a person, the popular the person is and is considered to have a good reputation, depending upon the content of the scraps posted. I feel that because one may receive a message from an unknown person, one is not judged partially as compared to receiving messages only from friends. Thus, one’s reputation is of greater value. As it is a public community, everyone who is a member of this community can view these messages and the number of times one’s profile is viewed, and the number of friend’s requests, determines the popularity of the person.

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. (1996). People have many reasons for not wanting their real names to be revealed online to prevent identity theft; for instance, protection of privacy and anonymity are two reasons for creating online identities.

Identity theft is the new crime of the information age. Just as a criminal collects enough personal data on someone to impersonate a victim and racks up debt in the person's name before disappearing, similarly, an identity thief steals your individuality and uniqueness and leaves you behind with nothing. (2005)

As the number of Orkut users increased, there was a rise in the number of fake and clone profiles, something that can be achieved just in a matter of a few minutes. These fake profiles are normally created to troll, to spam, to flood or just for fun. Later, the clones started to flood communities and scrapbooks by submitting topics or scraps hundreds or thousands of times manually.

With so much personal information given about myself, like my birth date, address, email, age, friends and pictures, it is very easy for anyone to fake my identity and create one similar to it.

Another example of fake identity is the one below. It’s aparently Richard Gere’s online community, created by a fake. Celebrities are often targeted for identity theft.



Thus one should be careful and should protect their personal information online as identity deception is growing steadily and caution is better than regret.

Reference:

-Donath, J.S. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Communities in Cyberspace.
http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

-Schneier, B. (2005). Schneier on Security: Mitigating Identity Theft.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/mitigating_iden.html

-Lackaff, D. (2004). Norm Maintenance in Online Communities: A review of Moderation Regimes. http://lackaff.net/node/20

-Online identity. (2007). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 18, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Online_identity&oldid=108207999

-Orkut. (2007). In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Orkut&oldid=110026276

24 comments:

Kevin said...

Excellent coverage of Orkut for the purpose of demonstrating what you know about online identity and reputation. Well done uncovering an example of a fake celebrity account as well. Full grades and an award heading your way. :)

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