I absolutely love when someone is setting up a new e-mail account or developing a new screen name for AOL Instant Messenger and it takes that person a good couple hours to make sure their identification name is perfect and suites them. I understand why this is a process that people often do not just dive right into. According to Masum, "Since there is no absolute objective reputation quantity stamped on people’s foreheads, measurable proxies are necessary…." Often times, people want to associate something positive or interesting about themselves into their user name that sets them apart from everyone else. A person's user name is very important; it is the first thing that someone sees when talking that person over the internet, and/or is the first name that comes up when receiving an e-mail. The internet proposes more risk to a person's identity than something off the internet does. What I mean by this is that over the internet, there are a million and one ways people can find information about you and gain access to all of your personal things, and people have certainly done this. This is the reason people create these "identification names" in the first place, to protect themselves from fraud and unnecessary information exchange.
With managing school, work, and a social life, I have developed many online user names in the past. Currently, for talking to my friends on the internet and sending e-mail to my friends and family, I use the identification of 'NooCH717'. This may not mean anything to a lot of people but to me, it is what I have been called by certain family and friends for a long time now and I like the fact that when I am on the internet chatting, it reminds me of my family and friends calling me by this nickname. I do not have a strong interest in online gaming or anything of that sort so my identification name essentially is between me, my family, and my friends. With more professional matters such as school and work, my identification name is just 'djlisi'. Keeping this plain and simple allows me to appear professional and proficient. For example, if I was at an interview for a part-time job and was asked to fill out some paperwork containing my e-mail address, name, address, etc, and in the box for e-mail I wrote: 'HotLaXPartier6969', I feel this would set me off on the wrong foot professionally and would give people reason to prejudge me or think twice about hiring me. When thinking about online user names and identification names, often times people think of reputations associated with them but also, people need to realize that before the reputation came the first impression.
Honestly, I really do not think it would be that difficult to obtain someone else's identification. Look at the number of people on MySpace and Facebook alone that reveal extremely personal information such as their phone numbers, addresses, hometowns, where they attend school, work information, and so on and so on. Plugging that information into a system I am sure people can find banking information easily with a little research, car information, etc. Let us just take one example to prove my point. Say someone knows your school e-
mail address. If you have not personalized your password, it is something that is not hard to get a hold of. At Buffalo, passwords are simply the first four digits of your birthday and the last six digits of your UB card. Personally, I do not think this is a very efficient way to pass out passwords to students. Even though many students SHOULD change their passwords immediately, many do not because of various reasons. In gaining someone's UBit name and password, you have access to their grades, schedule, e-mail and many other personal accounts of a college student. According to Forbes.com, "New identity verification and authentication technologies will provide further security, although the rollout and networking of these devices will take time." I think many companies releasing this information technologies are learning as we are that there are always going to be new ways hackers and identity thefts can gain access to information which explains the time factor.
Creating online identities in a respectable fashion is a great way to not disclose personal information that could be picked up by anyone over the internet. One needs to be careful yet aware that their online identity however, can define a perception of how people view them.
References
Donath, J. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
Forbes Inc. (April 2005). Hooked on Phishing. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/04/29/cz_0429oxan_identitytheft.html
Masum, Hassan and Zhang, Yi–Cheng. (July 2004). Manifesto for the Reputation Society First Monday, volume 9, number 7. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/index.html
With managing school, work, and a social life, I have developed many online user names in the past. Currently, for talking to my friends on the internet and sending e-mail to my friends and family, I use the identification of 'NooCH717'. This may not mean anything to a lot of people but to me, it is what I have been called by certain family and friends for a long time now and I like the fact that when I am on the internet chatting, it reminds me of my family and friends calling me by this nickname. I do not have a strong interest in online gaming or anything of that sort so my identification name essentially is between me, my family, and my friends. With more professional matters such as school and work, my identification name is just 'djlisi'. Keeping this plain and simple allows me to appear professional and proficient. For example, if I was at an interview for a part-time job and was asked to fill out some paperwork containing my e-mail address, name, address, etc, and in the box for e-mail I wrote: 'HotLaXPartier6969', I feel this would set me off on the wrong foot professionally and would give people reason to prejudge me or think twice about hiring me. When thinking about online user names and identification names, often times people think of reputations associated with them but also, people need to realize that before the reputation came the first impression.
Honestly, I really do not think it would be that difficult to obtain someone else's identification. Look at the number of people on MySpace and Facebook alone that reveal extremely personal information such as their phone numbers, addresses, hometowns, where they attend school, work information, and so on and so on. Plugging that information into a system I am sure people can find banking information easily with a little research, car information, etc. Let us just take one example to prove my point. Say someone knows your school e-
mail address. If you have not personalized your password, it is something that is not hard to get a hold of. At Buffalo, passwords are simply the first four digits of your birthday and the last six digits of your UB card. Personally, I do not think this is a very efficient way to pass out passwords to students. Even though many students SHOULD change their passwords immediately, many do not because of various reasons. In gaining someone's UBit name and password, you have access to their grades, schedule, e-mail and many other personal accounts of a college student. According to Forbes.com, "New identity verification and authentication technologies will provide further security, although the rollout and networking of these devices will take time." I think many companies releasing this information technologies are learning as we are that there are always going to be new ways hackers and identity thefts can gain access to information which explains the time factor.Creating online identities in a respectable fashion is a great way to not disclose personal information that could be picked up by anyone over the internet. One needs to be careful yet aware that their online identity however, can define a perception of how people view them.
References
Donath, J. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
Forbes Inc. (April 2005). Hooked on Phishing. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/04/29/cz_0429oxan_identitytheft.html
Masum, Hassan and Zhang, Yi–Cheng. (July 2004). Manifesto for the Reputation Society First Monday, volume 9, number 7. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/index.html
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