Real Names Online

Read:

• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/randi-zuckerberg-runs-wrong-direction-pseudonymity
• http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/google-plus-user-names/
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/another-reason-facebook-wants-a-web-of-real-identities-commerce/2011/08/01/gIQAnH7znI_story.html

There are people who do not mine their names and privacy be exposed to everyone else in the public but there are people who value privacy more than those who don't. Give those who value privacy, a thought for them. Protect their identities.

One thing I never liked nor understood about social media technologies like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...etc... they simply DO NOT RESPECT YOUR PRIVACY AND COMPROMISE THEM INSTEAD. They do not protect their databases sufficiently as we have seen many leaked user credentials from compromised social media website databases. You may not mind your accounts becoming compromised but you would inevitably allow your compromised accounts become stepping stones that leads to compromising other accounts and systems (think of password reuse as an example).

Quoting Randi Zuckerburg saying:

I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.

I don't think that's a good way though. Why not remove login functions, remove security protocols and just let people in ? That's the same idea. We need some privacy. We need some locks to secure ourselves and our assets. We want to protect ourselves. Names can and have been forged. People have used other's name to create accounts for malicious users to frame and shame their victims. It's inevitable that the use of "real names" is flawed from the start unless some international mechanism is assigned and ensured each individual is who they are (and assuming the design have not a single technical flaw - which is impossible). 


If privacy and security are not respected and properly implemented and something happens, it's really hard to tell what exactly happened.


Therefore concluding....

PRIVACY MUST BE RESPECTED !!!

Anonymity of Voting in Singapore

Watch:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDeIFUw1K1o

How secret is our vote that we are promised ? From the video, we know that our identity are linked to a serial number for the vote and the voting paper contains our serial number. Therefore, when we cast a vote using the paper, it is extremely likely there would be much idea of and the ability to be most accurately know who voted for who by tracing the serial number of the voting paper which is linked to each individual.

Is this an anonymous voting pracise they promised ? NO !!!! You DO NOT NEED our serial number on the voting paper slip. This would improve anonymity.

Six degrees of seperation

We have known that the connection to each other is just a six degree of separation. To put this to the test, we could go make use of our MSN contacts and view our friend's contacts list and start tracing down. If it is possible to make a software using MSN Contacts web service APIs to automate this function of mapping the "friends-of-friends", we would be able to some how see a huge portion of the world linked to each other.

For agencies who love to peek at our private lives, they could use this technique and have already been using this technique to map our relations with others.

This also expose a fundamental social security problem which is to allow people to freely access your friends and contacts list without the proper security measures to restrict views. Even if you restrict the view on your own list, people could use the concept of "six degrees of separation" to find others who have YOU and make a map about who have YOU in their contacts list, making it difficult for you to hide yourself.

So what's this all about. This is the prove that our social privacy, is faulty and weak even with access restrictions, are we able to fully hide our private life from others and protect it ? Yes to a certain degree as long as others do not have any "pointers" pointing at you.

Does it mean that we should just stop all privacy controls and just open up our life for all to see... making ourselves "naked" in front of the world ?

No. It means we need a far better measure to protect our private life and anonymity then what we have currently.