Halt. Who Goes There?

Reputation - both made and lost in cyberspace. A man is suing a ‘friend’ for allegedly setting up a fake Facebook account with incorrect and damaging details on. Herein lies the problem - it is so easy to do. You don’t need any proof of identity to set up a web page on any of the social networking sites, so you can frame anyone and everyone if you really want to.

I have written before on whether you should or shouldn’t join social networking sites - if only to ensure that others can’t impersonate you. As well as on ither forms of impersonation on the Internet.  But… let’s face it, these things are popping up all over the place, OK, so there are a few really popular ones, but you could never cover them all. The problem is that a damaged reputation can takes years to recover if you are a company, and sometimes never recovers if you are an individual - as there is always a nagging doubt.

We don’t have any specific legislation to cover this issue and I’m not sure if any of the legislation we have that skirts the topic (impersonating others) can be brought to bear as it is not being done for personal gain. Perhaps liable - but then again the site is purporting to be ‘you’ rather than someone else saying defamatory things about you. I would welcome any other peoples thoughts in this rather grey area.

Perhaps it is time for social networking sites to grow up, after all their success is based on accuracy - the person you find, is the person you know. It looks like this is an other example supporting the decline in Implicit Trust.

July 2, 2008 | Filed Under Reputation 

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2 Responses to “Halt. Who Goes There?”

  1. The Privacy, Identity & Consent Blog on July 2nd, 2008

    Computer Weekly Blog Awards…

    The Computer Weekly blog awards are not accepting voting. There are some great blogs in there, but I’d like to suggest you take a look at a few of my favourites: - Dave Birch (Consult Hyperion, Digital Identity Forum) -……

  2. Guy Bunker on July 11th, 2008

    The blog awards voting system seems to be working now… and yes, there are some good other ones mentioned - well worth reading.

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