QotW5: Online Identity & The Dangers

Friendster
"Are you in Friendster?"

That is a question that we hear ever so often since the advent of Friendster in 2002. An online social network, "Friendster", is based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities (Friendster, 2007). It demonstrates the small world phenomenon - the hypothesis that everyone in the world can be reached through a short chain of social acquaintances (Small world phenomenon, 2007). As of July 2005, Friendster reported over 17 million users (Stutzman, 2006), and today, 37 million (About Friendster, 2007). According to the Hitwise Singapore service, Friendster is the top social networking website visited by Singapore Internet users (Hanchard, 2006).

As for me, I own an online identity in this virtual community as well. The site first allows identifiability through the showcase of usernames, which are in fact the users’ first names. Friendster also gives users the option to display their last names. Under the usernames, the site allows users to put up a picture which would head the users' profiles and for identifiability purposes.

Each user’s profile allows the user to give detailed personal information, from the school or company the user is from or related to, to the music, movies and television shows that the user is interested in. Plus, there is an “About Me” section to allow the user creativity in showcasing his individuality, or simply to give others more information of himself. The purpose of revealing so much information is to allow people to know you better and perhaps draw those with similar interests or backgrounds to make as new friends.

I find that the funny thing about users revealing so much about themselves on this site, which the site of course encourages since it features so many categories for users to write about, is that users want to talk about themselves. Users want to put down words on themselves tangibly to describe their characters. It serves as a place where you can see what kind of person you are. We as people, often want to determine what kind of person each of us is. By putting them down in words here, we make it as though it were a public statement, a declaration of “who we are”.

The irony about social networking sites is that though risks abound in revealing so much about yourself, especially when the information could be mined and used to your disadvantage, we still do it. People want to be known for who they are. People want to see it for themselves who they are.

Establishing Reputation
Friendster allows one to establish reputation via three ways.

First of all, users’ profiles allow them to build reputation. As mentioned before, the user’s profile attempts to demonstrate individuality through his words. His pictures or videos also say something about himself. Therefore, the user can build reputation by trying to showcase himself in the light that he would want to be in – someone cool, athletic,

mysterious or fun etc.

Next, would be the user’s contacts. Whenever you access a user’s profile, you would be able to see the number of contacts the user has. Somehow, the more contacts one has, the more seemingly popular the user is. This would explain why some friends of mine kept adding people whom they would probably not speak to in “real life”, and even unknown people, just so their Friendster accounts would be populated with contacts. This contact list would be a “conventional signal” of popularity; the sender need not possess the trait in order to make the signal (Donath, 1996).

Lastly, the testimonial section of Friendster helps to establish reputation. This section allows users to give one another testimonials on who they are or whatever they want to say to one another. Reputation is further established by the number of testimonials given. However, this section is also a conventional signal. We cannot know for sure whether other users give accurate information on the user, plus, the implicit rule of reciprocity also functions here – “I give you one testimonial, and you give me one back.” In fact, I have had friends who outrightly plea for testimonials.

I guess this whole Friendster account facilitates public announcements of what we want others to think of us. In our attempts to seem authentic about our claims, the clincher comes when we reveal too much information like our email addresses, blog addresses and even our telephone numbers on this social networking site. We drop too many clues for people to know about us, and we wind up with cases of identity theft and stalking, etc.

Identity Theft

Users put themselves at risk of a variety of attacks on their physical and online persona when they disclose too much personal information.

Impersonation
A form of identity theft is impersonation. If I can pass off as you, I can create damage to your reputation, either on-line or off-line. With so much personal information displayed in virtual communities, it is relatively easy to mine the information and pass as someone else. The impersonator can simply give comments elsewhere, post defamatory remarks simply by signing with the target's name (Donath, 1996)

Phishing
On the other hand, the most common vector for identity theft would be deceptive phishing in email. When users drop multiple clues about themselves through names, pictures, blog addresses, email addresses, etc. it is easy to mine the activities or memberships that the user is involved in. Next, the phisher can send the user deceptive email similar to what the user would probably be involved in already or potentially interested in, with a “call to action” that demands the user to click on a link. The web site to which the user is directed to then collects the user’s confidential information. The phisher can then easily transfer funds from the user’s account, purchase merchandise, take out a second mortgage on the victim’s home, file for unemployment benefits in the victim’s name, or inflict other damages, etc. (Emigh, 2005).

Conclusion
In our need to express ourselves completely, especially online, I guess we need to be more aware of the risks we face when we put down our personal information. In fact, we should check out social networking privacy options before we put down any information. As for Friendster, the user is allowed to restrict his information to either his friends or two degrees of friends. This keeps the information safe to people that the user trusts. However, take note that this applies only if the user added contacts that are actually trusted as friends. Nonetheless, the best would be to keep especially private information such as email addresses, blog addresses, and telephone numbers from social networking sites.

References

About Friendster. (2007). Friendster, Inc. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://www.friendster.com/info/index.php

Donath, J. S. (1996, November 12). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. MIT Media Lab. Retrieved February 19, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html

Emigh, A. (2005, October 3). Online Identity Theft: Phishing Technology, Chokepoints and Countermeasures. Radix Labs. Retrieved February 19, 2007, from http://www.savemyos.com/organization/Additinal_PDF_files_files/Phishing-dhs-report.pdf

Friendster. (2007, February 13). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster

Hanchard, S. (2006, July 18). Friendster still dominates in Singapore. Hitwise Asia Pacific. Retrieved February 20, 2007, from http://weblogs.hitwise.com/sandra-hanchard/2006/07/friendster_still_dominates_in_1.html

Small world phenomenon. (2007, February 12). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_phenomenon

Stutzman, F. (2006). An Evaluation of Identity-Sharing Behavior in Social Network Communities. School of Information and Library Science The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved February 20, 2007, from http://www.units.muohio.edu/codeconference/papers/papers/stutzman_track5.pdf