30 Minutes Lunch Rant - You are not you when you're online?

A bit of cliche tongue-in-cheek snickers' tagline for the opening. You are not you when you're hungry. Likewise, you are not you when you're online?

Note how I ended my sentences. Hungry, fullstop. Online, question mark. Because the first is a statement, and the latter, a question!

One of the biggest problem of the Internet is how users perceived it. Most users that I interviewed for my dissertation felt that the Internet is a free space, or specifically, their free space. As such their perception of such lack of authority online led to undesire behaviours like irresponsible speech and actions. Of course, my sample size was merely the tip of an iceberg, however interesting enough to give me such results. 

No matter what anonymity is proposed to you, I would say, practise your responsibilities. There is no anonymity in the world as an earthly fact. All actions leave traces. All digital actions thus also leave digital traces. 

Bitcoin. So much anonymity and privacy? You thought so. It is just a matter of whether anyone took extra effort to trace the roots. That was how William Ulbricht was arrested. 

On the other hand, one may have thought that the NSA has superb infrastructures and talents in place to carry out surveillance. Actually I would believe that the team is no more than slightly above average analysts and computer experts. Because as users, we leave so much digital traces.

Simply put, whatever content that we post online, anonymous or under a pseudonym, carries with them meta-tag(s). Say for example, I upload a picture on Facebook, not only my account information is linked up, but where is photo is uploaded from, time and date taken, and a whole load of data is embedded within, and these are meta-tags.

Break it down even further.. If John sent me a word document, when i opened it, i would be able to see on whose microsoft office was the document worked on, as indicated by the author information displayed. If I worked on a private document on my company's computer, the word doc that you receive from me will read 'author: sony pictures'. Thus unknowingly I would had revealed these data.

Ultimately, you are still you when you're on the Internet, there is no escaping any legal, social or personal responsibilities. Therefore, be true to your actions.

Time for my snickers!