Assignment 6: Know Everybody, Trust Nobody

As discussed in last week's blog, privacy is considered to be one of the biggest issues, or concerns, when it comes to new technologies such as the internet. We also agreed that, generally, privacy is your own personal willingness and ability to withhold information about you from others and deciding who can be exposed to this information. This can be done through several online identities. An online identity is a social identity that network users establish in online communities. Examples of these identities include: an account name, identity in voice and language, and the signature. I personally own two of the three of these identities, which include an account name and an identity in voice and language; however, the one that I use most often and is the most familiar to me is the account name.

An account name is the most basic as well as the most straight forward form of online identity. These names occur in the virtual world almost everywhere you go, including e-mail, instant messaging systems, and also on networking websites such as facebook, myspace, flickr, and even the one you are using right now while reading this: blogger. These names that are chosen to be used build a reputation for the user in their online community, making it the deciding factor in whether or not other users should trust the person on the opposite end of the account name.

When using my online account names, I find that I use them most prevalently while using my e-mail account or while instant messaging via AOL Instant Messenger. Because I use an institutional e-mail account which I received from the University, my account name greatly reflects my real name, also affiliating myself with the university because of the domain name @buffalo.edu. Because of this, it is easier for people to identify me through my account name and therefore putting more trust into what my message is saying and also building a good online reputation for myself because of my affiliation through UB. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) accounts, though, are different. Other programs and sites that are not affiliated with any type of university or corporation are available for sign up for free or sometimes for a fee. These types of accounts are called commercial accounts.

These commercial accounts also require you to make up an account name for yourself, but not requiring you to do so by using your own personal identity in any way. AIM is the most widely used instant messenger service in the United States, providing millions of screen names to people and sometimes several different names to the same person. Although I choose to use a screen name which makes it easy to identify myself through messenger systems such as this one, many people do not. These people may use an account name to specifically deceive others, and quite possibly trying to take on another person’s identity. For these reasons, it is very hard to build a good reputation through AIM if you are using an account name in order to chat with people who you do not know and who do not know you. This is much harder especially if you have a name that does not identify you in a positive, trustworthy way. Many may have more than one account, using one to build a good reputation by having positive interactions with people while using the other to deceive people into thinking that they are somebody who they are not. Once again, privacy plays a role in your identity. You get to choose not only who knows your account name, but what information you divulge to people on the internet through this name. Whether this information is fictitious or not is completely up to the user, making commercial accounts much more dangerous to build a reputation on than institutional accounts because of the amount of trust that you can unknowingly put into somebody over an instant message because of who they may say they are (Donath, 1996). This trust that people put into people who they do not know could even lead to some dire consequences, which were also discussed while talking about online privacy.

Citations:

(2007, Oct 2). Online Identity. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity

(2007, Oct 5). AOL Instant Messenger. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_instant_messenger

(2007, Sept 15). Reputation. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation

Donath, Judith S. (1996, Nov 12). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community Web site: http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html