And today’s installment of “Why It’s a Bad Idea to Ever Do Stuff Online that Might Come Back to Haunt You Later, No Matter How Anonymous You Think You Are,” we have …
… second thought at Second Life. Which is an online multi-player computer “game” where you go around doing … well, it seems, fairly normal stuff. Except you aren’t you, you’re an avatar — perfectly anonymous, safe, able to engage in all sorts of activities that, in the real world, you’d never do. Which, of course, often means sex, and there’s a thriving sex culture (and sex industry) in Second Life, all built around anonymity.
Oops.
[… T]he company’s computers were hacked last week and access was potentially gained to the real-world names and addresses of as many as 650,000 Second Life denizens. […] Much of members’ data, including credit card numbers, was encrypted and thus is unlikely to be used for fraud or identity theft. But what makes this security breach so unusual is that the accessed information is perhaps most valuable not in the real world but in the fantasy landscape of Second Life.
[…] Blackmail and extortion are also possibilities should a hacker threaten to expose some of Second Life’s racier activities — the virtual philandering of dissatisfied husbands or wives, say — to real-world scrutiny.
“It’s identity rape,” said Lisa Stone, co-founder of Palo Alto’s BlogHer, an organization for female bloggers, and a sporadic resident of Second Life. “If this happened, it would be a personal violation. It’s completely unacceptable.” She said she’s typically much more uninhibited in the virtual world of Second Life than she is in the real world. This is largely a factor of using a pseudonym when interacting with other Second Life members and having an invented digital image — an avatar — to hide behind.
[…] “There’s a lot of sex in Second Life,” said Rich Gibson, a Sebastopol computer programmer who has been dwelling in the virtual world, on and off, since February. “The experience of having an avatar changes things,” he said. “People do things that they might not do in the real world — things they wouldn’t want people in real life knowing about.”
(via GeekPress)