Busted

Saw this on Slashdot which means you probably have too:

The end of anonymity on the internet

As the joke goes, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog. But although anonymity has been part of Internet culture since the first browser, it’s also a major obstacle to making the Web a safe place to conduct business: Internet fraud and identity theft cost consumers and merchants several billion dollars last year. And many of the other more troubling aspects of the Internet, from spam emails to sexual predators, also have their roots in the ease of masking one’s identity in the online world.

Change, however, is on the way. Already over 20 million PCs worldwide are equipped with a tiny security chip called the Trusted Platform Module, although it is as yet rarely activated. But once merchants and other online services begin to use it, the TPM will do something never before seen on the Internet: provide virtually fool-proof verification that you are who you say you are.

Very interesting article – but it doesn't mention anything about sex.

One of the topics that always comes up in the context of cybersex, online dating and even just interacting online is that people feel more free to be themselves when they feel anonymous. They also feel more free to pretend to be someone else – but even that is an aspect of yourself, and what you pretend says a lot about the real you.

Of course, this is mostly machine-to-machine identity transparency, not person-to-person. You're not going to log into a cyberspace orgy and have your snail mail address broadcast to everyone else in the room.

The TPM could solve some of the age-verification issues for porn. (Every savvy teenager will make sure to surf from a computer registered as an adult, which is not the porn companies' fault.)

But my instincts are to distrust. It's not that I do anything illegal online. It's just ... I don't know what it is. A knee-jerk American reaction to being "tracked"? And a concern that the TPM will inhibit people from exploring the deeper parts of their sexual psyches, worried that Someone will "catch" them ...