The Sun Chronicle fires a Volley Against Anonymity – Your Name and a 99 cents

The Sun Chronicle is a local newspaper on the South Shore, the suburban towns south of Boston in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They had to close their comments because of the all to familiar anonymous slime. Here is what you would have to do to comment on The Sun Chronicle now:

“To encourage intelligent and meaningful conversation, all posters will be required to register their name, address, phone number, email and a legitimate credit card number as proof of who you are. Your credit card will be charged a one-time fee of 99 cents to activate the account. We will not retain payment information after the one-time transaction. The poster’s name as it appears on the credit card will automatically be attached to the poster’s comments, as will the city/town and state of the community in which they live. You will sign in with your e-mail address and chosen password. When you post a comment, it will appear on our site like this - Joe Smith Plainville, MA wrote on (date/time) ”Blah blah blah.” Registrants understand that under existing state and federal laws they are legally responsible for any comments they post.”

This is great, expect to my knowledge there is no name verification during a credit card processing. In other words a merchant collects a name and an address for the marketing purposes and as a record but the credit itself is processed solely based on the card number and the expiration date. You can actually write your name is Ali Baba and you live in the White House and as long as the numbers match, a credit company will process the transaction. (via networkworld)

• Jaron Lanier on the Internet Inequality, Anonymity and the Middle Class
• Paul Carr versus the Internet Anonymity – Manifesto
• The Plague of the Internet Anonymity

Tagged as: anonymity, comments