What's My Name?

I unlike many many others, even in this class, I do not depend on the Internet as means of a social network or community. I try to keep it old school and restrict my time to communication to strictly emails and this lovely blog. I represent myself as Jen and was pretty careful about what type of information I divulge. For instance, under my limited profile, which is limited for a reason, the only snippet of information you can get is that I live in Boston. I chose that because I wanted to give everyone an idea of who I am but not spill my life onto the Internet.

Once upon a time, when AOL first became popular I had many pseudonyms that I used & often misrepresented myself as an older teen and was dumb enough to post pictures and give information that was too close too home. Now knowing what I know about the dangerous territory of Internet usage, predators, identity theft, etc. I would have never put that information on the Internet. What really scares me is where did it go and who in fact received it.

According to Identity and the Virtual Community, many people use the Internet for dual purposes based on their intentions. There are those who want to build a legitimate reputation and gain credibility; then there are those who want to completely misrepresent themselves. I suppose the determining factor of how you represent yourself on the Internet greatly depends on your motivations themselves.

Falsifying your identity can be a cause for concern, regardless of motivation or intent. Some who are interpreting the information seek a reputable source. In order to trust the source at all it is important to identify who you are - your identity creates a link between validity (Donath 1).

The reassuring thing is, well at least to me anyways, is that I am not concerned with an Internet based reputation at all. I may have created a very modest rep. on this website, whatever that may be, but I do not maintain a my space account or talk in chat's IMs or any other means of communication on the Internet. I think that it is creepy if people can find out information or even build a basis to make an assumption about you. I would rather keep my thoughts and feelings, triumphs, failures and opinions limited to my friends, family, co workers and people I identify with. I am sure there are millions out there who can identify with me too, but why the hell do I care? I don't know them.

And that leads my to stealing my identity- there is non for the average user to steal! I love that, but it also scares me to death that my really private information like banking information is floating around in cyber space. I try to be careful and watch my software to make sure I'm protected, but that is the only type of identity theft I think I am vulnerable to. Wow, I probably sound really naive right now! But it's true I watch my actions and what I put online more than any spy ware does, I can assure you that.