To prevent identity confusion, Twitter is experimenting (beta testing) with a ‘Verified Account’ feature. We’re working to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis. Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!

The first and last statements are what interests me, “To prevent identify confusion” and “Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!”.

I have always been a fan of the music group The Corrs.  One of the members, Sharon Corr has gone out on her own and is creating some songs and getting ready to release an album.  I have been following her on Twitter. She has a Verified by Twitter account. Her twitter ID is @Sharon_Corr.  If I look at her account, from the picture and links to her website and videos I can be reasonable certain it is her.  However, what if you were looking for a different Sharon Corr.  There must be more than one Sharon Corr in the world.  So I randomly tried @SharonCorr.  This person appears to be someone who writes poetry.  But is her name really Sharon Corr?  What if it is and she applies for a Twitter verified account?  Will Twitter verify it and give her the Verified by Twitter logo?  If her name is Sharon Corr, then they should.  But that might confuse someone like myself, looking for the singer Sharon Corr, so maybe they won’t.

How does Verified by Twitter make me feel safe as a user of Twitter?  If they fully roll this program out, they will encounter multiple people with the same name that all have verified accounts.  Maybe they use the URL on the profile page as the key.  If I see that the URL points to Sharon Corr’s website and there is a Verified by Twitter logo I can be certain that the person that has the website URL, also owns the Twitter account.  Of course that would confirm the relationship between the twitter account and the website, not the actual person Sharon Corr.  This of course assumes they know what I am looking for?  How do they know which Sharon Corr I want?

I looked up Taylor Swift for fun.  Her account is Verified by Twitter.  Her ID is @taylorswift13.    There is also a @taylorswift13x.  If you look at the two accounts they are very similar.

Taylor Swift’s real account (I think)

The website doesn’t help, because the URL points to itself.  We know Taylor Swift is popular so if you look at the followers count and combine that with the tweets and news articles you can conclude this is her account … maybe.

A fake Taylor Swift account (I think)

This is probably the fake one because of the follower count.  But then again, maybe this persons name is Taylor Swift and maybe this is the person I am looking for, not the popular one.  I am very confused now and Twitter said in their statement above that they were going “To prevent identify confusion”.  In order to do that, you actually have to know what identity I want to find, you can’t just guess. But that is what they are doing ‘guessing’ what I want based on popularity.  I think Verified by Twitter is just security theater.  The verified account doesn’t help.  Verifying someone is a complex problem and  putting a logo on a page just doesn’t cut it.

Maybe the logo should really be “Twitter verifies this to be the popular person you might be looking for logo”?

They were able to count who downloaded versus actually clicked on the software that would infect a user with the storm botnet. Other data included number of targets, number of MTAs that accepted the spam, number of users that visited a site by selecting the link, time it took for a user to receive the e-mail then become infected, and response rates per country.

It is obvious a great deal of time, thought and technical effort was put into this research. It would be exciting to be a part of something like this.

Up until the other day, viewing the full note, included a link at the top entitled “view original post.” Selecting this link would bring users off Facebook to where the original post was located. This has suddenly disappeared as an option. Given the recent discussions around Facebook, Google, and others, I hope this isn’t part of a grand plan to “Keep what is their’s” ….. theirs being “your data” and attempt to stop external linking and access. I am of course not naive enough to believe it is not.

There is a general problem that companies and start-ups love the Internet and the openness it brings when they are beginning and it works for them. But as they grow, become more dominate, and business and money become part of the equation the openness of the Internet changes from a benefit to a threat. There arises the need to “protect what is ours.” You can see this in most internet businesses.

I have sent a note to Facebook customer support asking them what has happened to the “view original post”. I am hoping it is just a change in code and the functionality got missed — I’m not holding my breath mind you.

The answer here to me is obvious. Businesses can not be trusted to do the right thing. They can be trusted to do what makes the most financial sense and they always will take this path. We have seen this time and time again and there are way too many examples to list. People like Bruce Schneier have commented on this over and over again for years. Loren Weinstein has an excellent example of this.

The answer to this is easy. Put the burden on the companies, financial institutions and anyone that stores third party financial information. I’m not a lawyer and this would have to be legally worded but the something like this:
“If for any reason you in anyway use or store for any period of time third party financial or personal information for any purpose, you are completely and totally responsible for any breech of this information directly or indirectly for as long as you in anyway have possession of the data. You are legally and financially responsible for any misuse resulting from the breech of this information.”

We need to make it the businesses problem. I think this is fair. The businesses decide their security measures. The businesses decide how to protect the data. The businesses decide what level of competent experts to hire to design, monitor, and secure their systems. As a consumer, I have no say or control in these matters. I am forced to trust them. Trust that they are secure. Trust that they are competent. When that trust that has been imposed on me is breeched they should be responsible. If the businesses are financially and legally responsible they will fix the problem. Business will fix the problem because as we have historically seen over and over again they do this by nature. They do what makes the most financial sense for them. By making them legally and financially responsible it becomes in their best interest to do what makes the most financial sense for them, protect customer data.

The only right thing geeks.com did here was to contact law enforcement.

Can’t help but think this will do something bad to them when they are older.