Virtual Identity and Identity Theft

 

What is Virtual Identity?

Virtual Identity is also known as Internet Identity(IID), Online Identity, Internet Persona. Virtual Identity is a Social Identity that a web user establishes in online communities and websites. 

For example, if you log in to any social media application, you must have a specific profile created previously by providing your personal details such as first name, last name, gender, email address, country, etc.. otherwise, you are not permitted to log in to the system. So, you'll be requested to create a specific user name and password for them (owners of the websites) to easily monitor your real identity with these provided details. Email can be used as a unique key to prevent creating fake profiles/accounts by checking whether the provided email exists in the current user's database mapped with another user. And also user names and passwords can be used to verify the user's identity and only allows to enter the system if the provided user name or password currently existing in the database which mapped to a particular user.

Virtual Identity is a Problem in distributed applications since in distributed applications the owners of the websites can't able to identify/communicate with you physically since it is done over the internet. So, instead of having this physical identity, they are using virtual identity to identify a user virtually by comparing it with their registered details.

Possible Identity Problems and Identity Theft

There are several possible problems that may occur performing virtual identity in real-world applications. With the reference to this image, if there were no concept called "Virtual Identity", we can't answer these problems.

Problem 1: How does the server distinguish messages from A and B?

Problem 2: And same as how the server distinguish messages from A and B if the client B maliciously wants to pretend to be A?

So, these are some of the critical points which prove that there is a need of managing Virtual Identity in specially in distributed web applications and it affects the security of the system heavily. 

When we consider E-commerce applications, it is crucial in assigning an identity to client users since the concept of virtual identity directly affects and indicates the security level of the application. These are some of the problems that may occur in E-Commerce applications when related to Virtual Identity.

1. An online banking server where every user could access any other user’s data.
2. A virtual shopping basket where two users add items into the same basket.