sum1

It's starting in South Korea. In South Korea a law has been brought in that requires you to give your name and social security number before you can post a message on the net. Other countries are watching this and I get the impression there's a good chance of this coming in elsewhere in the world.

See this article:

Chat room bullies face end to their internet anonymity - Times Online

See also the comments below the article (use the "Read all comments" option). Some people are against the new law but what scares me is that half the commenters are enthusiastically for it. You have people who want this to be brought in in the US and Britain. I'm worried they'll have their way.

Internet anonymity is essential for safe internet posting. When it's absent all sorts of things can go wrong. In England a guy gave out his identity on the net and he was tracked down and killed by a guy he'd argued with online. This new law is horrifying.

Indian Summer

There's no such thing as internet anonymity in the first place, though, so I don't see the big deal. If some creep wants to track you down, all they really need is your IP address anyway.

sum1

That's a lot different than having your name.

Indian Summer

Not really, though. Anyone with a little technological knowledge can trace an IP to your hometown and usually even closer... sometimes to your house. And really, most cases of online murders and whatnot aren't due to having a full name- it's someone who gives tidbits of information- a first name, a home state, the animal that serves as their school's mascot, etc.

S.A.S.H.A.

Creepy! But a true hacker can track down anyone, anyway.

Sasha

sum1

Not everybody who'd do harm is a true hacker. Just because somebody'd like to stalk someone or would like to harm someone who they met on the net doesn't mean they have hacker skills. Chances are they don't. Something that stops them but doesn't stop a true hacker would stop a lot of trouble. Internet anonymity isn't there to stop the minority of people who are real hackers, it's there to stop everybody else and that includes a lot of potential troublemakers.

Lain

But there is that thing about the security number in which people could steal a lot of personal information and possibly your identity.

Indian Summer

I honestly don't see what the big deal is. I can't imagine this information being readily available to everyone viewing your messages. It doesn't seem like you'd be in much more danger of getting tracked down or getting your identity stolen than you are when you order something online. You're providing your full name, credit card info, and home/billing addresses in those forms. *shrug*

elisheva

I agree with sum1 here - this is very creepy. Expression needs to be free, and if expression is tied to your identity in terms of SIN etc, that freedom can too easily be eroded. Especially in many countries where the governments aren't big on free expression in the first place.

sum1

And anybody who's careful doesn't order anything online except from a rare few sites at most. Sites that are confirmed trustworthy. As for giving your name and social security number to sites you post on, why should you trust the people who run such sites with the info? The reality is that people running sites HAVE sold such info. South Koreans already have to give in their social security numbers to various sites and because of that there is a big business in stealing social security numbers off the net, identity theft. Also, when you order something online you don't usually piss people off and make enemies. In posting on message boards it's all too easy to do that, which gives people motivation to do something with your info.

Indian Summer

Any site can be hacked. I trust amazon.com, but I certainly still check my statements carefully for random purchases I didn't make. I also think it's too early to make such judgments- we don't know what kind of person is allowed to have a site in South Korea that falls into this category, what security there is in that area, and what sites are even accessible to South Koreans.

welshgirlyUK

I dont know how it would work here (Britain) because we dont have social security numbers and you only get a national insurance number when your 16.

Indian Summer

I don't so much think the social security number itself is the big part of it. I think it's about being able to find/identify people if they say something illegal or whatever, so putting an address in would suffice. The other reason I'm not so worried about this is because I highly doubt it's more than a scare tactic- like I don't think you'll have cops showing up at your door if you type in random numbers were your social security number is supposed to go, lol. I was on a fanfiction site the other day where you have to verify you're eighteen and type your name into the entry page, but there obviously wasn't anything in the script stopping you from entering if you inputted random characters into the "name" field. Because I can assure you my name isn't actually "%," lol.

sunnykerr

Yeah, it seems a bit of a lose-lose scenario. Because the people who'll actually make use of that information are the perverts and the criminals. Whereas the people on the side of the law, say government officials, will have such a backlog that they'll never manage to accomplish anything. And that's assuming they resist the urge to go Big Brother on us all.

Jacob1983

This law is stupid in my opinion. The government should be harsher on pervs and criminals and not on law abiding citizens.
Besides, the bad guys will just figure out ways to out think the government. Couldn't a person just destory their computer or hide it if they were caught up in a computer crime? I've always heard that evidence is extremely crucial in cases like that.