On proof of identity in virtual worlds
Hypothetical Situation: You visit PayPal’s virtual office and visit with a friendly bank teller who helps you with the day’s financial issue. You are at ease, you’ve talked with this particular avatar many times before and feel safe in the farmilliar and comfortable virtual surroundings. After verifying your identity she fixes your problem and you are on your merry way.
…Until you check your balance later that day. Zero?!? What happened? You quickly teleport back to the landmark and find to your horror PayPal’s offices have vanished. In fact this wasn’t PayPal’s office at all but a complex ruse reminisent of the old email phishing scams.
As more and more businesses comes to virtual worlds we need to start asking ourselves how we prove that the avatar you are doing business with is in fact an employee of the company in question. Proof must exist that the office you sit in is in fact an offical branch of the organization.
I visited a fantastic build today. A virtual capitol hill that had replicas of the hall of congress, the whitehouse, and the washington memorial. Rumor has it that recently there was even an anti-war protest. It looks and feels a lot like a trip to downtown DC. However, to the best of my knowledge there is no offical governmental sponsor.
Figure 1: Virtual Hall of Congress
What happens when branding of one organization is replicated in a different virtual space? What happens when an avatar sees a political protest or even material that leans politically to the left or right and thinks it is sponsored by the government? In the future, what happens when we walk into a bank office only to have it vanish the next moment?
Is anyone out there working on the technology to solve these questions?
