Disadvantages of Digital Identity

Disadvantages of Digital Identity

Privacy is personal, private and confidential information about us. Personal information could be our financial, medical, relationship status, activities, opinions or any information relating to us. We give our privacy easily on the internet especially on social networks. E.g. In real life, if a stranger asks for our phone number, most of will refuse to give it to them. However, on Facebook contact details such as email address, phone numbers, etc are given easily.

Privacy

Moreover, other personal data i.e. date of birth, who our parents/sibling are, where we study, where we work, relationship status are also most common information we provide giving our privacy less importance.

Things which are private should be kept that way; the whole world doesn’t need to know sensitive information about us. If we accommodate too many facts about us online this can help criminals commit cyber crimes such identity fraud, identity theft or other illegal acts.

A hacker is someone who has knowledge, skills and understands weakness of security system. Hacking refers to gaining unauthorized access to system or breaking into computer system. Hacking can be used for various reasons good and bad. The most common reason for hacking is to access valuable data without a person’s permission.

Hacking

e.g. Christopher Weatherhead was a student of Northampton University who hacked into PayPal account along with other anonymous hacking group. Due to this hacking, PayPal lost £3.5m. Offences as such against the law happen frequently, there are many examples of hacking.

“A hacker stole £35,000 from his neighbours' online bank accounts after working out the answers to their security questions from information they posted on Facebook and Friends Reunited2”, this example shows how careful we need to be online.

Moreover, identify theft or fraud is another concern we need to consider. Just like how we can create false account on websites, others can do the same. They can take our personal information from various websites. And create a profile they can use but with our data. They can use websites existing under our name without our knowledge which is called identity theft. They would want to hide their true identity for their own safety, security and legal reasons when performing something illegal or unethical.

Identity Fraud/Theft

They can use it do malicious acts such as cyber bullying, harassing, hacking other people accounts, etc. Credit card fraud refers to thieves using your credit card information to purchase whatever they desire. They have an access to your bank details by hacking, creating false merchant sites, tracking you while you do online shopping, Triangulation (a merchant asks customer to pay for their purchase by email sending their card details, who then uses consumer’s card to buy the product for consumer and then use the card for their own personal gain), etc.

Another disadvantage of involvement in Digital Identity is tracking, nowadays websites can track, monitor and store information about us i.e. our online behaviour; websites we visit(browsing habits), our online shopping history, activities. Not only, it is morally wrong to track us without our permission and invading our privacy but also illegal to use cookies without our consent. However, many of us are not familiar with cookies as they are difficult to notice, hard to control and not aware of the impacts being monitored. Email mass marketing, targeted adverting, etc can be achieved from this.

Privacy Invasion

Also, many website have privacy policy which we “just agree” without actually reading it, most of the website mentions they might sell our data to third parties. They can also get our email address form our social network profiles, if we have provided one and our profile is public.

Privacy Policy

While anonymity has its advantages, it also has disadvantages, as people can use internet with fake identity, it also increases cyber crimes such as cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is when someone is being harassed, threatened, insulted, humiliated and discriminated online such as on facebook, discussions forums, emails, gaming sites, chats, instant messaging or any websites on the internet. Cyber bullying can have impact in an individual’s life i.e. depression, lack of confidence, anxiety, etc. As bullies can disguise themselves by suppressing their own identity its easier for them to commit crimes.

Cyber bullying

Let’s look at an example; Taylor and McKenzie were arrested for cyber bullying (aggravated stalking of a minor under 16.) their friend by creating a fake profile in Facebook (under their friend’s name). They also uploaded indecent pictures of her, wrote very offensive comments and added 189 people as friends from their school. When detectives “alerted the alleged victim, she was not even aware the fake profile existed but she later told teachers she had been subjected to ‘numerous incidents of teasing and ridicule because of it”.

Control of informationOne of the disadvantages of having Digital Identity is how we do not have control over our own information. E.g. once someone has uploaded a picture on Facebook, others can copy the image and ‘do anything with it’. Also, what other say, write or post about us is uncontrollable. Therefore we need to manage our Digital Identity properly to avoid any inaccurate, irrelevant and reputation damaging information being represented on the web about us.

http://s2.cdn.memeburn.com/wp-content/uploads/online-privacy.png

http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/life/movie-hacking-leet-terminal.png

http://blog.budgetpulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/steal-cc.jpg

http://www.puretravel.com/uploadedresources/adminimage/PrivacyPolicy.jpg

http://info.uknowkids.com/Portals/176530/images/cyberbullying.jpg

http://www.p2pnet.net/images/fbrebel.jpg http://www.hollywoodisburning.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Jpalardy-TakingControlOfTheCommandline9971.jpg

References