Repost: Virtual Identity v.s. Real Identity (dated on the 25th February 2007)

This is a post that I wrote 2 years ago on my previous blog hosted on a different site. I'm going to repost it here because the topic becomes even more interesting than 2 years ago and I think it will become the topic for the future as well.

Living in a virtual world with a virtual identity allows a person to explore his/her life in a totally different way than in the reality. Moreover, the person can have multiple identities in the virtual world that can be completely different than what he/she actually is in reality. With the possibility of multiple instances of the same person with possible different personalities, the security in the virtual world is in doubt. How trustworthy is a person who you can only interact in the virtual world? It will be desirable to enforce the virtual identity, to some extents, closer to the real identity. Current technologies such as username and password are not enough. What seems to be missing is a physical linkage between the real person and his/her virtual counterpart. This physical linkage is difficult to establish if we are allowed to have multiple instances of the same person in the virtual world. Therefore, if the goal is to match the virtual identity closer to the real identity, it will be sensible to find a solution that can limit one virtual identity per person to begin with.