Issue 34 - Anonymity is Not Enough

[The Escapist Staff]

Mark WallaceAnonymity is a two-edged sword. It offers a sense of comfort and protection, but also causes issues of trust. Mark Wallace discusses how technology giants Microsoft and IBM are trying to handle internet anonymity, and how this could affect online communities.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Slartibartfast

I'm excited about the idea behind the identity protocol - I would love to be known as Slartibartfast or whatever in all of my games, forum id's, etc. I think that's pretty cool, because it keeps your IRL anonymity.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: thither

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. It's an interesting article, but all of the solutions discussed will require a lot of development both in the games and websites of interest (eg, both eBay and WoW would need to support, say, Papillion). It's hard to see any one of these gaining the ubiquity they would need in order to acheive usefulness, at least not in the near term when there are so many competing ideas.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mark Wallace
http://www.walkering.com
Thither - The nice thing about Papillon is that it doesn't require any third-party support other than the ability to write plug-ins and add-ons in the manner of the ones found already for WoW. I don't know how that would work for eBay, but in a lot of online contexts -- WoW, Second Life, EVE Online, Mozilla, many others -- the user if free to write their own add-on app. That's all that Papillon needs. Of course, users aren't expected to write their own identity applications, but it's quite possible that a community of open-source developers will arise who will do the heavy lifting. Where it goes from there is anyone's guess.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: incredulous

Are you Mad? Maybe there are those people out there who aren't up to no good, but who do value total anonymity. Here is the problem I have with this system as I understand it. If my understanding is correct (and please do correct me if it is not), in essence this system will verify that I am indeed the person offline who I claim to be. This protects my identity from the casual people I might meet online, however there must be a database somewhere in which my identity is stored. While you might not be able to ascertain my identity when our characters meet and interact in WoW, someone at microsoft and at IBM will be able (perhaps not likely, but able all the same) to look up who I am. At some level there must be an exchange of personal information between myself and the administrator of said system. To me this seems to be yet another limitation on my personal privacy in exchange for the illusion of security. Another way of keeping tabs on who is where and what they are doing and how they are doing it. Am I the only one bothered by this prospect?
I suppose it comes down to the question of who is watching those who are watching us? And who is watching the watchers of the watchers, and so on into infinite regress. Who will have access to this system once it is finished? What will they be able to do with it? How do I know that they are doing what they claim they are doing with the information?

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mark Wallace
http://www.walkering.com
As I understand it, the Microsoft system does store your personal information. Rather, accredited identity providers store it.

Not so in the IBM system. No personal information is stored. Your identity is based on your passwords.