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IDV = Trust ??? (Why SO Paranoid?)

Parsimony Paragon
SL Post-Anarchist, I Hope
Join date: 26 Oct 2006
Posts: 195
08-31-2007 15:28
Yes, it does, for some...and no, we do not, necessarily, trust Linden Lab nor do we trust the message. Why?

Because:

1) RL stores do not require me to divulge my driver's license to enter the store...and Lindens can prosthelytize until Armageddon, and it will not change the fact that they ARE a store...they sell a service, and, are, therefore, held to the same standards as any other merchant.

2) Because the Federal Post Office will send my packages where ever I want to send them, up to and including Federal offices and facilities, and without having to show that I truly am the person whose name I write in the return address...

3) Because essentially all nations in the RW, other than some third-world oppressive regimes, do not require that I be carrying a national identity card/document on my person at all times in order to make my way to the public market.

Business does not rely on trust, nor does Real Life! Business relies on reasonable risk, and the rest of the world, virtual or physical, does not need to know every last detail of your personal identity in order to either buy or sell a product.

Bottom line...SL has been doing just fine on the trust issue as a community, since its inception, if I believe what I read and what I am told by "old hands." Yes, there are frauds and schemes and scams. But, honestly, are they anymore widespread, or anymore egregious, than those realized everyday in the RW??? If you say yes, prove it, if the answer is *IDUNNO* (as I suspect), then why is any change necessary?

Largely, the same rules of business prudence that apply to spending your money on "risky business" in RL apply JUST FINE in SL, as well. Trusting a stranger, without enough information, well, that's what makes it risky. But, by the same token, the best confidence-scam artists in RL are the ones who give you more information, which, for reasons I will never understand, misleads folks to trust...information sharing only builds a "sense of trust," it DOES not make either of the parties in a transaction more trustWORTHY.

The only ONE entity's risk is at issue here...Linden Lab's...they don't trust of us, and Fortune500 now have more than enough reason to hedge their bets on trusting LL, in the absence of any meaningful subscriber statistics!!! Period! They don't know who to listen to because they do not know who they are talking to...and Fortune500 can easily see that, given the present account-creation environment, LL can't tell them who they are talking to...

They don't know whether they should be listening to Parsimony Paragon, because he might be the latest manifestation of one of their historic arch-enemies ((I actually had a name here, and removed it, hehe))...so, all their community-contact efforts are essentially meaningless for analytical purposes, because quantity of voices does not equal quantity of subscribers in any certain fashion...he might also be a member of their own Board of Trustees, if he is not payment-verified, too, or he could be a Fortune500 marketing director, testing the waters trial-by-fire style...this is an impossible tenuous situation to continue...hence IDV...LINDEN LAB NEEDS TO KNOW THEY *CAN* TRUST WHO THEY ARE TALKING TO, AND, TO AVOID MARKETING DISASTERS, THEY (LL) NEED TO KNOW *WHO* THEY ARE TALKING TO...PERIOD!

The Linden machine has two serious problems, that Robin somewhat-Freudian-slipped into her blog justifying the continuation of this Trojan Horse's "roll-out":

1) They can't assess their data on customer satisfaction in any meaningful way, and they have to fix that, and to appropriately weigh the feedback they are getting, to ever get their ship back to near-even keel in the eyes of the subscribers...

2) They CAN NEVER effectively sell themselves as a mainstream target demographic to any astute corporation, now that the Frotune500 blind headlong rush to "SecondLife-icize" is now largely over, because they cannot even show the standard demographic-profile pie-charts to any competent candidate marketing department.
Pinkfeather Heron
man-eating birdmonster
Join date: 17 May 2007
Posts: 27
08-31-2007 15:38
From: Parsimony Paragon
RL stores do not require me to divulge my driver's license to enter the store...


RL porno stores definitely ask for ID. So do bars, of course. And although I haven't been to a bonafide sex club, I'm willing to bet you a dollar that they ask for your ID.

Unless I'm mistaken, you can opt out and refrain from giving your info to LL and still play. It's up to parcel owners to ask for verification. Same as in RL- if you disagree with getting an ID card you don't have to get one, but you'll probably have a hard time getting into bars and porno stores.
Parsimony Paragon
SL Post-Anarchist, I Hope
Join date: 26 Oct 2006
Posts: 195
08-31-2007 15:43
From: Pinkfeather Heron
RL porno stores definitely ask for ID. So do bars, of course. And although I haven't been to a bonafide sex club, I'm willing to bet you a dollar that they ask for your ID.

Unless I'm mistaken, you can opt out and refrain from giving your info to LL and still play. It's up to parcel owners to ask for verification. Same as in RL- if you disagree with getting an ID card you don't have to get one, but you'll probably have a hard time getting into bars and porno stores.


I appreciate your point, but this is not about age verification, that is only the first type of personal information they plan to integrate into the IDV. Read Robin's blog closely, they are integrating voluntary divulgence of gender, national origin, etc...I'm sorry, but these are not data useful for verification of legal majority...only for establishing marketing demographics and for establishment of account-holder identity/uniqueness. As I've said before, along with so many others...I HAVE teenagers, and there are more teenagers walking around with D/L's etc with fake age data on them than you want to think about...and the identity-scrubbing environment we know as Internet, heh, care to guess what THOSE numbers are like???

Fact: Selling IDV as child-protection is either incredibly naive, a conscious attempt to deceive, or more than likely BOTH!
Moyra Ares
Registered User
Join date: 5 Sep 2006
Posts: 21
hear hear
08-31-2007 15:57
I absolutely agree with you parsimony
Brenda Connolly
Un United Avatar
Join date: 10 Jan 2007
Posts: 25,000
08-31-2007 17:25
From: Moyra Ares
I absolutely agree with you parsimony
I'm taking out the naive part.
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Peggy Paperdoll
A Brat
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 4,383
08-31-2007 17:30
From: Parsimony Paragon
they are integrating voluntary divulgence of gender, national origin, etc...I'm sorry, but these are not data useful for verification of legal majority...



Ummmmm.........doesn't your drivers license have your gender on it? Mine does. In fact when I moved to the state of California from another state a few years ago I had to present a birth certificate in addition to my still valid drivers license from another state.........and I was standing right in front of the person requestion that certificate. I have some check cashing cards for local businesses and stores that require age and gender to be divulged to obtain one. A credit card company requires age and gender. Apply for a home loan (even a car loan) and you will be required to give your age and gender. Any legal document for ID purposes require such information. The ID is useless without the information. All the information is used to check and recheck the other information you give for ID purposes. Can not simply tell someone that you are Jane Doe and you are over 18 years old and live somewhere in the world and expect that person to take your word for it. You must give enough information to verify that what you are saying is true.

The voluntary divulgence is your option............give it and get verified. Don't and stay unverified. Having a verified "ID" will allow less restrictions on you. Not haveing one will limit you.........it's your choice. People in RL who have no ID are very limited in what they can and cannot do...........it'll be the same (to a lesser degree) in SL.
Parsimony Paragon
SL Post-Anarchist, I Hope
Join date: 26 Oct 2006
Posts: 195
08-31-2007 18:59
From: Peggy Paperdoll
Ummmmm.........doesn't your drivers license have your gender on it? Mine does. In fact when I moved to the state of California from another state a few years ago I had to present a birth certificate in addition to my still valid drivers license from another state.........and I was standing right in front of the person requestion that certificate. I have some check cashing cards for local businesses and stores that require age and gender to be divulged to obtain one. A credit card company requires age and gender. Apply for a home loan (even a car loan) and you will be required to give your age and gender. Any legal document for ID purposes require such information. The ID is useless without the information. All the information is used to check and recheck the other information you give for ID purposes. Can not simply tell someone that you are Jane Doe and you are over 18 years old and live somewhere in the world and expect that person to take your word for it. You must give enough information to verify that what you are saying is true.

The voluntary divulgence is your option............give it and get verified. Don't and stay unverified. Having a verified "ID" will allow less restrictions on you. Not haveing one will limit you.........it's your choice. People in RL who have no ID are very limited in what they can and cannot do...........it'll be the same (to a lesser degree) in SL.


Heh, point taken, but answer me this...what part of RL, other than possibly public restrooms, is gender-restricted, and again, why why why is it important, in terms of gender-identity?

Purely for sake of general discussion, hoping you all accept that I'm not @ Peggy, specifically:

And more than that, who can you imagine actually asked for this? Do we presuppose to provide a chat room environment that has no potential for disengenuity? Hehe, if I want to have relationships that really mean anything, that have any impact on my RL self-esteem, RL self-identity/feelings/ego, isn't RL the place to do that...and even there, face to face, is there not still some risk of deception? Does anyone really presuppose to be able to create and/or ensure such a silly idea here in SL??? That's not really what we want in SL, is it? Is even a virtual reality that bears no risk/no adventure/no possibility of RolePlay something that can really (really?) survive?
Zen Zeddmore
3dprinter Enthusiast
Join date: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 604
08-31-2007 21:52
heh, i'm so often taken by surprise at the seeming endless requests from rl businesses for my info.

one popular electronics supplier has a policy where they ask for a different kind of info each day of the week (like monday zip code, tuesday phone number, etc). The covert grab at my data infuriates me. for cripes sake it's all public record anyway.

So the grocery store shoots a huge bevie of discounts for using their "customer service card", they're not losing money on these items, we've just forgotten they inflated the regular prices to make it seem like it's a "bonus".
And after they're confident they have all the info they ever will get from watching your spending habits, will they continue to provide discounts? Doesn't the amount of money thrown to get this info scare anyone but me?

i guess its more glass forest than ever for me
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