A case of Anonymity or Naivety

The debate on anonymity is certainly going to stay for a long time. There are those who are fiercely defensive of their private lives, like myself. There are also those who automatically disregard anonymous individuals, stripping them of any credibility. But, how important is the disclosure of identity in a widely abused Web 2.0 environment?

A new local tabloid was recently drawn into the issue of anonymity, with possible “incitations” as an obstacle to healthy discussions or for possible sensationalism by a social media “guru”. Come to think of it, if not for sensationalism a tabloid wouldn’t be called a tabloid, online and offline. I figured we would have learnt that from Edison Chen’s sex scandal that erupted over the internet and printed tabloids. (Check the dictionary)

Coming back to what I called a “widely abused Web 2.0″ lifestyle, it is indeed sensible for anyone to hide certain parts of their identity. At least to me, seeing your face on your blog or corporate site does not necessary indicate your credibility. Hence, it reduces us to that important question; what protection does the Web 2.0 environment offers to encourage disclosure of identities?

Here are some recent cases of how your identities can be compromised and abused;

Woman branded as prostitute in Facebook scam
A young advertising sales executive discovered shockingly that her identity has been stolen when she received a “friend request” with her name and photographs. The ending of this article also reported a businessman taking legal actions against an old school friend whom created a fictitious profile of him in Facebook.

Students details flashed over Google
The court ordered Google to remove pages which displayed students social security number (just like our Identity Card numbers), test scores and names. Google claimed that it is not able to crawl secured sites but the details appeared on Google anyway.

Satellite maps and social sites used to organize trespassing
Property owners are shocked to find strangers using their swimming pools at night, and also left behind rubbish like beer cans. Your private property is not all that private afterall, given the interactive web we have today.

While the above incidents do not explicitly indicate how the lacking disclosure of identity has soured online interactions, they tell us that we are hardly protected online. Given this lack, it is only natural the best course of action is to conceal as much details as possible. Easily, security breaches in the IT industry proves Web 2.0 to be equally hazardous where personal identities are concerned.

The lack of protection is not only evident on the general platform, but also internally. Let’s take a look at some prominent cases.

Hewlett Packard rogue staff sold product vulnerabilities in black market
The clientele list includes the US Government even. If the same can be done for product vulnerabilities, the same can be done with your details registered in their system. Not convinced? Read on.

Rogue employee sold consumers’ financial data
It’s a whopping 2.3 million consumers’ data which were stolen and compromised. The data included personal details, bank accounts and credit cards information. These are not things we will want to place in our blogs.

A worthy note though, these incidents are barely the tip of the iceberg. With such atrocities online, the anonymity adopted by many does not necessary imply “the intent to deceive, mislead or worse, abuse”. True, there are still people who will conveniently use anonymity to attack, but thankfully, no Government has disbanded any police force for having a rogue officer or two.

It would be naive for anyone to think that disclosure of identity will be able to lend you any more credibility than you deserve. At least for me, my assessment of credibility goes beyond just a picture on the wall. Especially so for bloggers… contents, contexts and the communities play a big role in my determining of credibility. Perhaps, disclosure of identities is falling right into the hands of data miners or for the unscrupulous, an easier path to attack individuals. Just look at how many Facebook applications made it compulsory for users to disclose their personal information to the creator?

Businesses nowadays are adopting social media more, and anonymity is a big part of it which we cannot ignore. Instead of tearing down the credibility of anonymous comments or writers, it is more important to engage. Understand the values they contribute otherwise not available by those whom have disclosed their identity but not being able to say anything more for fear of complications.

At least when your identity is abused, the critics of your anonymity will be the last person who will help you to repair your reputation. This, I assure you.

By Ed | July 3, 2008

Filed Under Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0

Comments

3 Responses to “A case of Anonymity or Naivety”

Shelby on July 4th, 2008 7:30 am

Fucking ay right. Here’s an interesting case for you to prove your point: Mary Spicuzza, a print journalist, attempted to “out” a Wikipedia editor who she believed had been badgering her sister (the girl in question saw to it that Mary’s sister’s article on Wikipedia got removed). Mary then took up her sister Jeanne Marie’s cause and attemtpted to use her newspaper’s resources to “out” the Wikipedia editor.

You can read about it here:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-02-13/news/wikipedia-idiots-the-edit-wars-of-san-francisco/

And here (for the Wikipedian’s take; scroll to “Attempted outing”):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators’_noticeboard/IncidentArchive372#

Unfortunately, Mary Spicuzza was fired for her efforts. She violated “journalistic ethics” by using her newspaper to try to out the guy.

But as she points out in her article, journalists sign their names to their work, whereas anonymous assholes don’t have to do that. Is that fair? Everyone should have to sign his/her name to their posts be they on a blog, Wikipedia, or a newspaper article comment.

[Reply]
Ed replied on July 4th, 2008 9:28 am:
Hi Shelby,

Thank you for sharing that piece of news. I am not familiar with Mary Spicuzza so I will reserved my comments for that. It’s a good read nonetheless. But interestingly, you also indicated that Mary used her professional resources for her personal reasons.

Given the wide availability of information on the internet now, it is easily verifiable if a certain point made is true, or otherwise fictitious. Personally, I wouldn’t take it down the route of whether “it’s fair or not”. One is a professional requirement (journalist), the other (bloggers etc) are not. Having said that, I am still rooting for a common blogger regulation.

On the other hand, I read Wikipedia and take it with a pinch of salt most of the times. I am sure you will be glad to know that.

[Reply]
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