Mission 11 Extra
Posted by Adrian on October 14, 2009 at 10:50 a.m.
Who Are You?
It might sound a bit Bourne Identity to doubt whether your friends are real, but it is easy to fake your identity online. Just set up a new email account, create a profile with a fake name, fill it out with made-up information, and you're done. It has a name too: sockpuppeting.
All of us do it a little bit: we carefully choose which bands to put on our lists of favourite music, we link to websites and videos that make us seem clever, or funny, or cool. We present an edited version of ourselves online - and offline too, when we wear contacts or makeup. We certainly do it when we're out on the pull, or on a date!
The internet just makes it a bit easier to control the kinds of signals we give off to people. We can communicate through carefully-drafted and edited text, and we lie about our age and background much more easily than we could in real life. A club bouncer isn't going to be fooled by a 12 year old with a fake ID, but if you put a fake birthday into your account info, a website has to believe you.
Even though Jo, Max and Cal aren't exactly thick and spent lots of time talking to Billy online, they never sussed what they'd have figured out within 30 seconds of meeting Billy in real life: that 'he' doesn't exist!
Playing The Game
There have been some truly impressive online frauds which have fooled companies, newspapers and sometimes even governments!
In 2009, a 17 year old in Yorkshire managed to convince airport officials that he was a multimillionaire about to launch his own airline. He set up fake websites, had articles written about his airline in trade newspapers, and even had a face to face meeting with the director of Jersey Airport (sounds like he watched Catch Me If You Can a few too many times...)
Most people faking their identities online aren't quite so daring or outlandish. It's a mostly harmless activity which allows people to be creative, or join communities that they don't want their friends to know about - maybe to write Twilight fanfic, or join OkCupid to find a date without their mates taking the mickey. Or maybe sometimes people just want to pretend to be someone else for a few hours a week...
But some people use their 'secret identity' to post insulting or hurtful messages about people they don't like, or to trick people into being their friends, or even sometimes to spy on old girl/boyfriends or mates they've fallen out with. In one infamous case, Lori Drew faked a MySpace profile to bully one of her daughter's enemies, 13 year old Megan Meiers. After exchanging some cruel messages, Megan committed suicide. Lori Drew was convicted of three counts of misdemeanor computer fraud, and could face up to three years in prison.
The things we say and do online have consequences in the real world, for ourselves and the people around us. But serious cases like these only get into the news because they're rare. Most people online will be as honest as you are!
Smokescreen is a cutting-edge game about life online, on a new social network called White Smoke.
Explore websites, search for clues, receive phone calls, chat on IM, and tackle puzzles and minigames. On Smokescreen, who can you trust? Find out more...
