HIGH-TECH CRIMES REVEALED: CYBERWAR STORIES FROM THE DIGITAL FRONT

A Virtual Identity Makes Crime Easier

A virtual identity is basically a way to represent a physical being in the digital world. An email address is an example of a virtual identity, where the address represents an actual person. A chat room name is also a virtual identity. They are very useful for allowing people to personalize the highly impersonal cyber world. We can send an email to a virtual identity, knowing that it will get delivered to a physical person.

Virtual identities, by their nature, do not have any human attributes. This introduces social problems that its designers did not expect. It has enabled people to do things that they normally would not do in the real world. In Internet chat rooms, where users are known only by a virtual ...