Different Identites on the Internet

According to Judith S. Donath, identity plays a key role in virtual communities. In order to understand an evaluate an interaction one must know the identity of the person they are communicating with. However, the virtual world of internet communities, it is very easy for one to manipulate or lie about who they really are in the physical world.
I have two online identities. One is portrayed through my Facebook profile and account and the other is portrayed through my screen name that I use when communicating with others via instant messaging.

My Facebook account establishes much more of an internet identity then my screen name. My Facebook profile reveals a lot of personally identifiable information. For example, the more basic things it lists are my home town, birthday, and whether or not I’m in a relationship. More specific personal characteristics of my profile are lists of my favorite movies and TV shows, groups I’m involved in, and where I live while at school. There are also visual representations of myself provided by the hundreds of pictures of me that are attached to my profile page. This is not an avatar because it is an actual photograph instead of an icon-sized graphic image. Therefore, it depicts more personal information.

I think people establish their reputations on Facebook by who they have in their “friends”. Just because your Facebook friends with someone doesn’t mean you have ever even met the person or had an type of interaction with them. However, the friends you accept or request on Facebook usually have similar likes or interests as you and portray they type of people you normally do hang out with. Your friend list would not make you identifiable as worthy of trust or not, but it might influence someone when deciding whether or not they want to be your friend. Once you accept someone’s friend request, they can see your Wall. This enables them to see who you are talking to on this forum and who is talking to you. This is another tool that can be used to make judgments about peoples personal identity through their virtual identity.

Having so many pictures of yourself on the internet, free to the hundreds of people you are “friends” with, can be dangerous. I have a friend whose identity was assumed on MySpace. Someone took some of the pictures she had posted in this forum and established a different profile under a different name using her pictures. This was a very annoying and frustrating ordeal for my friend, because the person put the profile on a private, so since my friend was not friends with her alias she had no way of contacting the person to tell them to delete the profile they had created.

I myself don’t have an e-bay account but my dad does. He uses his screen name as his pseudonyms. This does reveal some personal indentify because it includes part of his name. e-bay, unlike Facebook, is a forum that allows users to establish a reputation, which allows others to decide whether or not they consider you to be trust worthy. After you sell something or buy something the person who you interacted with in the exchange is given the opportunity to provide feedback on how the exchange went. A person who has a lot of negative feedback, for example, they did not send a product on time, they mis-advertised the product they were selling, or did not respond to bids made on the product, will likely be marked as untrustworthy and people will not do business with that person. On the other hand, a person with a lot of positive feedback, who sends things quickly and easily, uses pay-pal, and correctly advertises their products, will be marked as a trustworthy person and people will use them without worrying that they have just fallen victim to a scam.

All in all, virtual identities can establish great forums to meet new people, and in the case of e-bay obtain products at a discounted price. However, you must be very careful. Chat rooms and other internet forums can be very dangerous. It is so easy to create a false identity on the internet.. ever see To Catch a Predator?, there are some sick people out there. Internet identities have become so extreme that there are now psychiatric help centers for people who have lost their sense of reality because they are so raped up in their internet identities. BE CAREFUL!