My Reflection: Topic 2

This was a topic of particular interest for me. It was interesting to read and research on some of the main issues regarding multiple online identities.

In this day and age, not only are we collectively using the web more, but individually it is almost imperative for us to at least have one online identity, whether it is on social networks, in virtual worlds or takes another form.

I believe the same point was made on all posts that regarding the web, the majority of us advocate the use of multiple online identities as a means of separating our professional and online lives. There may be information, tools, photos, videos etc that we may want to share with either group that may not be appropriate for the other.

I’m sure our work colleagues don’t want to see tweets of photos from your crazy weekend and I’m sure our friends don’t want a load of jargon from our different disciplines plastered all over their timelines. Hence, having at least two accounts allows us to balance and organize how and who we share what data with.

Another point of concern was anonymity. On the internet, we have to give up our identity to converse with others, yet the internet is full of fake identities, due to identity theft, or people creating a new one for themselves. People are uploading anything from 1 to 40 pictures a week, and if these are not being deleted, they are on display to many people.

Someone may choose to create a fake identity online in order to protect their own details due to concerns of privacy as we learnt in the Digital Residents and Visitors topic. Though, inevitably there are those who abuse their ability to create many accounts.

Here is a great talk by Jim Blascovich on digital freedom.

 

I believe that multiple online identities presents issues as have been documented on numerous Catfish episodes, but it can also feed online fraud.

As we open new accounts, most of us only use a small number of different passwords for all these. Well this article: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/online-fraud-too-many-accounts-too-few-passwords-1089283

Suggests online fraud has increased three fold ‘partly due to consumers having a large number of web accounts, according to new research’. So it is important to consider the risk to ourselves whilst managing multiple online identities.

The digital world changed the way people see each other, as more and more people provide their personal social network with private information like photos, location information or status messages. Thus, does it really signal a lack of genuineness if we exhibit different parts of ourselves on different web platforms, or does everyone have and need multiple identities and this is just an exaggerated issue?