Anonymity on the Internet… Good or Bad?

Posted by Nick Bradley on July 09, 2010 at 4:03 AM EDT.

Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and many other popular games, announced this week their Battle.net “Real ID” system.  This is a new “optional” layer of identity that Blizzard’s customers can use in order to network with their contacts across any of the Blizzard gaming platforms.  The “Real ID” system lives up to its namesake.  It uses players’ real first and last names as their identity, thus making their online identity and their real identity one in the same.  While the word “optional” is listed in many places on their FAQ, it does not appear anywhere in the section covering their official forums, and for good reason.  Blizzard states that in mid July, they will begin implementing use of “Real ID” across their game forums, starting with Starcraft II.  This means that in order to post on their official game forums, you will be forced to post using your real identity, thus completely removing any sense of anonymity.

This announcement has created quite a stir among the online gaming community causing players of other similar online games that have their own communities wondering if their fate will follow suit.  Blizzard’s goal in this implementation is to institute ownership and responsibility on its users in the hopes of making the communities/forums more hospitable.  However, one of the most alluring properties of massive multiplayer online games and its like has always been creating an atmosphere where you could be someone else and live in another world.  Will this take that away? 

For many, the most attractive part of the Internet, other than the immeasurable amount of data at your fingertips, is the fact that you can have complete anonymity, or at least the expectation of anonymity.  While this seems like a rather nice feature at first, the appeal of anonymity quickly devolves into lack of responsibility for ones actions.  Once that occurs, we see what we face today: forum trolls, keyboard warriors, and just simple disrespect from people who know they will never face the wrath their actions would likely incur had they behaved that way in the real world.

Why is this a security concern?  Anonymity versus Responsibility and the ramifications of both have been a rather controversial topic of debate for quite some time.  The free distribution of PGP back in 1991 sparked a similar debate.  It is a precarious issue though since taking away anonymity would in most cases only punish the "Good Guys" much the same way people feel that gun control does.  Law abiding citizens would follow the rules and get taken advantage of by those who do not.  The first of the fall out that would most likely manifest would be an exponential increase in occurrences of identity theft due to much easier access to peoples’ personal information.  Our children would be even less safe on the Internet than they are now and you would most likely see a massive reduction in use and participation of these online communities.  It is already too easy for the bad actors to obtain the data they need in order to prey on users.  A move in this direction will make it even easier.

In conclusion, this plan, while created with the best of intentions, sounds great on paper.  However, actual execution with the intended results is highly improbable.  The overall issue has many pro's and con's, but I think that while the simple fact remains that the Internet is global and impossible to fully police, anonymity must remain.  I say that not in order to protect those who see the Internet as a place to loot, pillage, and burn, but to protect us from being easy targets as much as possible.

http://us.battle.net/realid/faq.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38134494/ns/technology_and_science-games/
http://www.pgpi.org/doc/whypgp/en/