Interaction on the internet has long been cloaked in dark veil of uncertainty as to who you are actually communicating with in the end.

We have all had to throw caution to the wind, at some stage, and place a certain amount of trust in that the “person” we are communicating with, and hope they are actually who they say they are. Phishing has taken a huge advantage of this trust. The people behind all these schemes have taken one element that we all use as a measuring stick to trust and that is recognition. We recognise the names, colours, logo’s and brands, in essence, that they duplicate. We have all dealt with these brands and therefore don’t expect anything underhand.

As is human nature, we have adapted, we have become cautious and we are now aware of the tell tale signs to uncover fraudulent behaviour. Just like we all know that NO bank will ever ask you to confirm your account details via an email. Lesson learnt.

But a new age has dawned in the digital world – Social media identity theft.  Recently Twitter has had to address this issue in the media, with a lawsuit filed against them by Tony La Russa, the St. Louis Cardinals manager. An account was opened in his name and tweets were made concerning his team. In his lawsuit, La Russa said the fake tweets were “derogatory and demeaning” and caused emotional distress.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone  on the Twitter blog as well as bringing to light the micro blogging companies’ plans to release a new system, called Verified Accounts, which seeks to eliminate future account fraud. The beta version that is being experimented with aims to validate accounts through link backs from an official website of the claimed account owner and then awards a special seal that confirms the owner claim. In other words, if you link your business website to your Twitter account, it will use this information to confirm that that the account actually belongs to you and your business, and then places a special seal on your Twitter profile.
Twitter has said that the Verified Accounts system will initially only be available to public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals that are at risk of impersonation, but that once the system is in place that it can be applied to business profiles.

The business application of the new system could eliminate incidents like that of James Cox and CNN. Although this was not malicious and came from necessity on the users part, it could easily have been mismanaged, like that of the La Russa imposter.