Each of us has our own identity due to the differences in our capabilities, our characteristics, and our personalities. Identity has been essential in our physical world as it helps us understand the person that we communicate. Is identity still significant in the virtual world since identity turns out to be more ambiguous? Who are “SweettieKay, Devilking, and Jaybott”? How do these virtual identities interact in online community? Identity, in fact, has even become more important in the development of virtual community as it helps us assess the reliability of information and trustworthiness of people whom we interact especially in the online auction community, in which trust is the key to its success (Donath, 1996).
Mentioning about online auction, immediately we will think of eBay, the world’s largest online auction and shopping website. Developed in September 3, 1995 as AuctionWeb by Pierre Omidyar, a computer programmer, Ebay now has become the leading virtual marketplaces where both individuals and businesses can sell goods and services worldwide with over 200 million registered users (Wikipedia, 2007). Simply with a valid email address, anyone can register to be eBay’s users and choose to remain anonymous on the site. Thus, users on eBay are often recognized by others through their online pseudonyms or eBay user IDs as seen in the picture below.
A “Peer Reputation”
Everyday millions of items are sold on eBay through fixed-price trading and mainly auction It usually starts first with the seller listing an item he wants to sell, choosing the category for the item, proving a brief and clear description on the item including both text and photos, setting the starting bid that may contain a reverse price option (the minimum price that seller accepts for his or her item), determining the payment and shipping methods and choosing a closing date/time for the auction. Once the sale item is posted, buyers will begin bidding up for the item till the closing time. The winning bidder will send payments to the seller who, in turn, will send the item to him. Here, the risk of selling without payment or of paying with low quality begins to arise.
To address this risk, eBay has included an online feedback system or “peer reputation” where both the seller and buyer can rate each other according to “helpfulness and honesty” by leaving a positive, negative, or neutral feedback with a short comment after they have completed their trade (Masum & Zhang, 2003). For each positive feedback, the member will receive 1 score and similarly, the member will obtain a deduction of 1 score for each negative feedback received. However, the neutral feedback will have no impact on the member. In addition, each member can only increase or decrease other member’s rating by 1 score no matter how many transactions they share (eBay, 2007). Automatically, eBay will combine all of these ratings into each member’s profiles permanently, which prospective buyers can review by clicking on seller’s eBay ID as seen above in the typical seller’s profile. This feedback system has not only fostered trust among traders but also provided a great benefit to each user on eBay through shared trade experiences (Masum & Zhang, 2003).
The Crack for Identity Theft on eBay
With the emergence of newly advanced technologies, identity theft has become a major concern today in eBay leaving many users to be shocked after knowing that someone has used their eBay identities to purchase goods online or has changed their passwords without their consent. For example, in 2004, Mr. Donald Jay Alots found out that someone has used his eBay to purchase several thousand dollars worth of electronics while he was in the hospital at that time (Austen, 2005).
In fact, there are two main ways through which identity theft can take place on eBay. First, identity hijackers can steal passwords from infrequent users on eBay by scanning through eBay website to look for these users and entering a series of random password (Pursglove, 2002). Second, they can begin phishing by sending out a scam email to eBay users and redirect users to a “bogus web page” or a “forged” eBay website asking users for their ID, password, credit card information, bank account numbers, and personal information (Loe, 2007). For instance, as seen in the below picture, the address bar below "http://billing0nline.biz/updates/" actually has no relation with eBay at all rather than a bogus eBay web page (Identity Theft Resolution Center, 2007).
More importantly, once users click “continue”, they will arrive at the “bogus web page” while their information will be transferred mechanically to the identity thieves by a form processing service operated by ssl.powered.com (MillerSmiles, 2003). According to Ian Austen on the New York Times, March 7, 2005, the vulnerability of phishing actually arose from the company’s domination of online auction business and its heavy reliance on e-mail communication.
As ambiguity increased within virtual world, online identity has taken a key role in the development of online auction community. In fact, it is through peer reputation that enables users to build trust and share experience in the online auction community. More importantly, with the major concern of identity theft today related to the prevalent of phishing, a strong cooperation between the company and the users is essential to the mitigation of identity theft.
References
Austen,
Donath, Judith S. (1996). Identity and deception in the virtual community. MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 9:00 February 18, 2007 from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
eBay Inc. (2007). Evaluating a member’s reputation. Retrieved Retrieved 13:15 February 18, 2007 from http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/evaluating-feedback.html
Loe, I. (2007, February 12). Phishing, pharming, and the latest potholes on the information highway.
Mainelli, T. (2002, February 18). eBay identity theft hits close to home. CNN/Sci-Tech. A Time Warner Company. Retrieved 17:00 February 18, 2007 from http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/02/18/ebay.identity.theft.idg/index.html
1 comment:
Excellent piece on identities and reputation on eBay. Full grades and an award heading your way! :)
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