Hack’s Haven

Hypothetical situation: I walk down a market street on a weekend shopping excursion. Without my knowledge, my geographical position is being monitored and recorded every few seconds. Business owners, or for that matter anyone willing to pay can reconstruct my shopping trip to determine which products I’m most likely to buy on my next visit and how they can attract future customers.

How does that make you feel? My guess is many people would be quite angry to find out their movements were being recorded. However, as technology creates the beginnings of a “metaverse,” do people care about the virtual analogy? What if this market existed only as a series of ones and zeros? What if it wasn’t you walking down the street but your avatar – the virtual representation of yourself? Would you still have the same reaction?

As virtual worlds begin to attract major businesses there is a need to determine the cost benefit of virtual spaces. An important aspect of this is traffic patterns. Like the 2-D web before, this will cause tension between privacy activists and owners seeking to determine a virtual venture’s worth.

For example, on NOAA’s virtual island a sensor grid polls every few seconds to determine who, if anyone, is present and sends this information along with a time stamp to an external database. From this information, an avatar’s journey across the island can be reconstructed. As a business owner, wouldn’t you want to know who lingered at your product line? As a customer, wouldn’t you want to know this information is being collected? This begs the next question, where are the virtual world’s privacy policies?

In respect to the last question, NOAA has posted a draft privacy policy on its island. As a proponent of treating avatars with respect, my hope is that this type of document becomes a standard component of any reputable organization operating within virtual environments. In regards to Second Life in particular, is this type of data collection allowed in their terms of service? For the record, Linden Lab already collects this data according to their TOS Section 6.2. Once the data is external, does Linden Lab have any rights as to how it is used or like everything else in Second Life does it become an organization’ intellectual property? Finally, government web sites in particular are required by law to provide a privacy policy stating what information they collect and how it is used. If our government is interested in taxing our avatar’s virtual earnings, shouldn’t that same government also be interested in protecting our avatar’s rights?

Figure 1: Designing a virtual proximity sensor