Who are we really? (Accompanying blog tomorrow, I hope!)

I was told today that someone I know has her father saying that I'm not who I say I am. Of course, talking to anyone on the internet has the risk that they are not who they say they are. Even someone you just talked to yesterday at school. Someone could just log in as them on MSN, and you would have no way of knowing.

Now with this being said, there are a few ways to work around this problem. One is voice. You can ask the person in question to simply send you a voice clip of them saying a phrase of your choice. Either it is the real person, or a hacker with highly elaborate voice software. Personally, I don't think that it could do it correctly as even the voices they have for Microsoft (Microsoft Sam) are still very computerized.

Now that all works for someone you have met. But what about the person you have met online and not in real life? Well, this is where the problem gets much more complicated. See, you can't overly be sure that it is really the person who you think it is with any amount of great ease. You can't be sure of their location, what they like, or anything really. Sure, you can listen to them speak (or type in this case) and find out if anything they say contradicts anything else they have said. This works simply because it is hard to keep up another personality.

So you can watch what they type and how they type, but that doesn't give you too much. So you can ask them for audio clips of themselves. While it may seem intrusive to ask for someone to say something of your choosing over the internet, if you want to be sure, this is a very good way. It could effective foil hackers who say they are females, when they are really 35 year old males trying to get your password.

So sure, you have their voice, but that still doesn't perfectly link what they are saying, to what they type. I mean, worse case scenario is that they have their sibling or child come in and talk to you for the audio parts, and they type the rest. The next step is video and audio combined. Some people may ask why not use pictures? Simple. Pictures can be downloaded off a website and then sent to someone. Another idea I have heard is to get the person to take their picture in front of a certain thing which you specify. Photoshop, however, can get around this. However, if you do go this route, look for similar expressions repeated numerous times.

Ok. So back to the video and audio idea. Why does this work? Well, you can see them say and hear what they say. This way, you know that it is one person (or, perhaps two people who can sync their voices perfectly.) Without going into the last possibility, a video and audio link has one major drawback, and that is privacy. Do you trust this person enough to see who they really are? And do they trust you enough to show you?

So no matter how you look at it, the person you think you’re talking to and the person you are talking to may be two different people. Sure, you can try to make sure that they are who they say they are, but you can't be sure. At least not completely. So you have to take a leap of faith, and just believe. And I mean, as long as you aren't doing anything compromising, such as sending him/her nude pictures of yourself, giving away passwords, or credit card numbers, you should be ok either way.