About The Blog

Debate at the intersection of business, technology and culture in the world of digital identity, both commercial and government, a blog born from the Digital Identity Forum in London and sponsored by Consult Hyperion

Advertisers

Technorati

  • Add to
Technorati Favorites

License

  • Creative Commons

    Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

    Please note that by replying in this Forum you agree to license your comments in the same way. Your comments may be edited and used but will always be attributed.

« Dreaming spires, etc | Main | People try to p..p..put us down »

Virtual identity theft or identity virtual theft or identity theft virtually?

By davebirch posted May 16 2007 at 8:06 AM
[Dave Birch] We all understand how phishing is spreading from home banking roots to more and more online environments, not only in business but also in government. An example was the the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) warning about a phishing e-mail that used the ATO logo and came with the words 'Australian Taxation Office - Please Read' in the subject line. Claiming to offer a refund from the ATO, the message asks users to click on a link that redirects, of course, to a fraudulent web site. And never mind the real world, it's getting out of control in the virtual world as well, with the news that hackers -- most likely in China and Russia, apparently -- have been surreptitiously installing keylogging software on World of Warcraft (WoW) players' PCs, then hijacking their accounts and selling off their often valuable in-game assets. It's virtual burglary: when you log back in you've been e-turned over and all your stuff is gone. Try complaining about that down at Guildford nick.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

The expansion of phishing -- because of the lack of an adequate identity infrastructure -- in the virtual world is hardly surprising when Gartner claim that only four years from now, four-fifths of Internet users will have a "Second Life" in a virtual world. They also claim that four-fifths of Fortune 500 enterprises will too. This is all getting a bit serious. No wonder Linden Lab -- the Second Life guys -- are having to begin their own regulatory regime. They have announced new restrictions on how users consume and host content in Second Life, including a first "credential barrier": users who do not pay a fee to verify their age will be restricted from accessing adult areas.

Meanwhile, Forum friend Steven Philippsohn, Chairman of the Fraud Advisory Panel's working group on Cybercrime (and contributor to "Digital Identity Management: Technological, Business and Social Implications") says that “My experience has been that fraudsters migrate to areas that are most vulnerable,” said Steven Philippsohn, chairman of the panel’s cybercrime working group. “(They) always benefit where countries are loosely regulated, and this is an environment that is unregulated all together.” He's quoted in a new report from the Panel which says that governments should apply real-world laws and regulations to virtual currencies in online worlds like Second Life to prevent potential money laundering, fraud and tax evasion. When the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (who run the Panel) start going on about Second Life, you know that virtual worlds are no longer the cutting-edge domain of the techno-hip. But I can't help thinking that the typical drug dealer is much more likely to use 500 euro notes and illegal immigrants than Platinum Pieces and delivery elves. Or is it me that's old fashioned now?

Incidentally, if you think that reading Reuters reports on web pages is soooo twentieth-century, you can pop into their office in Second Life by clicking on this SLurl (ie, Second Life URL).


These opinions are my own (I think) and are presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c4fd753ef00d8351b4ff653ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Virtual identity theft or identity virtual theft or identity theft virtually?:

» Book Identity Theft from Book Identity Theft
What is the one thing that we as Americans do everyday without giving much thought too, P [Read More]

Comments

There are many ways that people can steal our identity. One, many people don't own a shredder. Use it. And second, be carefull about who and where you place your information.

This is a nice post about identity theft. It's to bad that this has hit America like it has.

The comments to this entry are closed.