Get a (Second) Life! Part III: Avatar Identity Theft?

Type in “online identity theft” in Google, and you’ll get a slew of results geared toward people who want to protect their real-life identities during their online escapades. What you won’t find is a whole lot about people who want to prevent their online identities from being stolen.

This mostly just shows the syntactic pitfalls of the Google search engine, but it also provides another implicit conclusion: online identities are just not that important.

Even other bloggers, like Ben Yoskovitz in his Instigator Blog, treat avatar identity theft as a marketing matter, with the conclusion that stealing from another’s “brand” in just in bad taste.

That’s it? “In bad taste?” Anyone who has been following my blog can probably agree that his stance is akin to blasphemy!

Let’s look at the implications of avatar identity theft in virtual environments like Second Life.

According to Jeremy Duffy a “computer guy” with a citizen technology web site, avatar identity theft is a serious issue. He says:

If someone gets your SL password, they can log in as you, from any computer, and do all sorts of nasty things. Pay your L$ to someone else. Say bad things to or about your girlfriend. Ruin your reputation. Never, ever, ever give your SL password to anyone, not even those closest to you. Don’t use easy-to-guess passwords, and change them frequently. And don’t allow friends and family members access to your computer.

In the immortal words of The Joker, “Why so serious?”

Well, users spend quite a bit of time making their avatars look exactly the right way. They spend real money to buy their avatars clothing, jewellery, houses and property, and put a lot of work into creating a virtual personality with which to interact with other Second Life residents.

So what happens when someone gets a hold of your password and turns your avatar into a Second Life prostitute? What if someone creates a clone of your avatar and makes it dress in attack other avatars?

Aside from the requisite outrage, users can actually feel violated if their avatars are stolen and made to do naughty things. They feel as if they were the ones who were made to do those things. In part, this is because so much of one’s self is tied up with your avatar’s identity. You put in your time and energy, your dreams and your desires, your personality and your hobbies into your avatar, and when it’s stolen, it’s emotionally almost as devastating as if your real-life identity had been stolen.
But what about if it’s the Second Life team that’s doing the stealing. That’s right—like Facebook’s bedevilled privacy policy, the Linden Lab Terms of Service grant them the right to do with your avatar whatever they see fit.

According to a Second Life blogger, Linden Lab can hijack your avatar and force it to do anything from endorsing the virtual environment to hawking Pepsi.

What ever happened to games that were just plain fun and didn’t carry the risk of one's identity being roughed up, pimped out and emotionally scarred?

Pulled Over on the Information Superhighway: Pit Stop to Analyse our Surfing

Now that we’ve got a bit of theory under our belts, it’s time to take a pit stop on this tour of the information superhighway and think about how our online habits reflect and shape our identities.

There’s a running joke in my family that if a black helicopter is circling, it’s the government come to collect me. This concern for my inevitable apprehension is mostly due to my admittedly odd surfing habits. I’ve googled everything from hotwiring a car to the chemical composition of C-4. (Hey, I was curious.) Anyway, JTF-2 has yet to break down my front door, lay siege to my house and confiscate my laptop, but at this point, it’s only a matter of time.

But before you write me off as a psychopath, think about what you look for when you surf the web. Here’s an interesting exercise—go through your browsing history sometime. Look at where you started and compare it to where you ended up. Are they on the same topic or are they vastly different? What about the middle of your surfing session? Can you pinpoint a place where your interest veered into something else?

If you’re like me, chances are, your browsing history is pretty predictable. There are some sites that you go to every time you go online. Some sites may be new if you heard about them from a friend or followed a link from a regularly visited page or have a new research project you need to get started on, but by and large, the sites you visit—especially those you go to immediately upon opening your browser—are those you’ve looked at time and time again.

Let me give you an example. Every time I open my browser, the first thing I do is check my university webmail. After that, I usually check my hotmail. Then, with those things out of the way, I get down to doing whatever it is I need to do—usually involving Google and research for school papers.

“But what does this have to do with identity?” you cry. Plenty.

You might have gathered from the first paragraph that I’m interested in a wide variety of semi-criminal topics. Also, you might have gathered that I’m a pretty nutty person. Some of you may now fear me because of my dubious sanity. Really, it’s all a matter of opinion.

If you consider my habit of checking webmail and hotmail every time I open a browser, you might calm down a little. My compulsive need to check my webmail all the time (due largely in part to the insane volume of emails I get from group projects in practicum courses) shows that I’m a generally studious person terrified of missing a deadline or learning some important bit of information too late. My visiting hotmail, while not noteworthy, shows that I am generally a sociable person who likes to keep in touch with far-flung friends and family.

All this from a throwaway comment about googling and a list of my top two most visited web sites.

But these surfing habits shape me as much as they reflect my interests and values. I’ve noticed that my constant need to be connected and current when it comes to my studies and my friends has morphed into a mild paranoia about missing something important. Now, more than ever before, I feel the need to write things down so I don’t forget, making lists and lists of everything from homework, to chores, to when I’m meeting friends to see a movie.

If I looked at my browsing history every day for a month, I could give you a more comprehensive picture of who I am and what I’m like, and how my surfing has shaped my identity. Of course, I’m not sure I want anyone to know that much about me.

There are some things that just shouldn’t be shared.