From the Readers

Fabricated identity

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-10 07:57

The Ministry of Culture issued some regulations on online gaming on June 22 to protect minors. The regulations require gamers to use their original identification card to register before playing an online game. The regulations may help monitor the Internet-savvy generation, but they are not foolproof.

There are many social networking sites in China, and they have more than 200 million registered online users. But the regulations to prevent netizens from using false identification are still weak. Business entities such as direct marketing agents and advertising agencies are taking advantage of social networks and even collecting personal information of users.

A research work, "Blue book of new media", published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences criticizes social networking sites for gathering netizens' personal information and selling them to third parties without the consent of the users. But the "blue book" doesn't define any legislative agenda for licensing or registration of social network services.

Sometimes netizens do not use their real identification because they are afraid that that would prevent them from saying what they want to say. Many people have complained, too, that some online accounts do not contain users' real information.

Social networking sites need to have some formal regulation on the age of users. Most of the social networks have not made users' age mandatory information to open an account. That means all age groups have access to all sorts of information on users on such network services.

Many users share photographs and other information (such as messages) on online sites. Regardless of age or sex, everyone using such networks has "access" to such photographs and messages. Since such information is not filtered instantly, it could create social problems.

It's time the online regulatory board came up with better regulation to make the social networking sites more trustworthy and help connect netizens to real person.

K.M. Rehan Salahuddin, via e-mail

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(China Daily 08/10/2010 page9)