Vulnerable to Internet?

The anonymity of the internet has been considered as one of the most problematised issues in online communities. Including online chatting programmes such as MUDs, most online programmes or websites give people the chance to express their multiple identities; by using different usernames, a person can actually show many personas. The problem is that such anonymity of the internet in not only constrained to someone having trouble with which ‘world’ he/she really belongs to and not sure of his/her identity, but often to seriously hurt others’ feelings through abuse use of explicit language. Many internet users are unaware of their ‘online identities’ and think it is ok to backbite someone who do not personally know. It is not just the chatting programmes. The development of Web-based technology has contributed to not just make funs of but to skin alive celebrities through video edits with simple CG. Many internet users post extremely harsh words as comments/replys on websites and blogs and such vituperation has even led several people’s life to death. In South Korea, since July, the government took concerted action to tighten up controls that will make the Internet in Korea less anonymous. Government and large private Web sites are now required to include ways to track all posters on those sites by their national identity number. Despite the emphasis on personal privacy here in some respects, many Web sites here already require users to register with that national ID number, which is checked against Korean government database of names and numbers. But on some sites, comments posted in response to a new topic or a news report can still be posted anonymously. It seems that the adoption of ID verification of internet users has aroused people’ attention to the fact that ‘online identities’ are no longer ‘false identities’.