I made two acquaintances while in this class and we exchanged contact information so that we're able to reach each other outside of class. When it came down to put my name as a contact I tried to convince them to put me as "William" because that was my "real name." Obviously not true and my fellow players caught on that was I trying to lie about my name and even correctly assumed I was trying to do something related to my task. Even after I tried to deflect it away that it wasn't part of my task they weren't budging on it.
Convincing someone your name is something else than what it really, especially without proof, gives you the ability to be who ever they want without question. This can be applied to online faking your name just as much as in person. "Hey, I'm the IT guy (insert name here) sent come look at that computer" without proper verification can lead to serious problems.
While I wasn't able to convince my fellow players of a fake name because they know my name and have means of verifying (through the readily available names on Moodle) interactions outside of the classroom can be very different. At this point we're all vigilant social engineerists (pretent that's a real word) but to those unsuspecting victims I could very well be a William. No one normally asks to verify your name in person, usually they don't even consider the possibility of me using a fake name in the first place. A wrong way to abuse this would be to impersonate a staff member by name so they can get access to places they wouldn't otherwise have. Sometimes companies are so big that they don't know people by face but instead remember their names and positions. An acceptable way of convincing someone of a fake name (or in this case something?) is when making user profile accounts. I hardly ever use my real name on anything online if I can help it. I think it's alright if someone chooses to hide their real name with a fake name when making online accounts.
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