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Space faking soars

by on05 January 2009

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Better to be someone else


The sorts
of people who are concerned about such matters are all a flutter over the fact that the trend of "space faking", where users masquerade as other people, is growing.

Pretending to be someone else online is not against the law in most countries, but in Australia, which is trying to position itself as the Little China in the Pacific is thinking of making it one.

Federal Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said such activity could be a precursor to identity theft. He said it all starts out as pretending to be someone else but it only takes a few steps before you are committing ID crimes and sodomizing badgers (we made the last bit up)(Really? sub.ed.).

Debus said that clever people may be able to use fake identities to gather clues about your identity and then go on to commit a crime. Social notworking sites are apparently the natural habitat of space fakers, who swipe other users' photos and create entirely new identities for themselves.

Late last year draft legislation was introduced into Parliament that includes offences for misusing identification to commit an offence. The new laws could out you inside for five years.

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