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Browser Firm That Required Users To Confirm Their Real Life Identity Shut Down After Its Employees Were Threatened (xconomy.com)
New submitter nleskovic shares a report: When Authenticated Reality launched last year, it seemed that the company had struck gold in terms of market demand and fit. The Austin-based startup had developed a Web browser that would require users to prove they are who they say they are. Users would have to sign up for an account -- scanning their driver's license and taking a photo -- in order to download the browser, which would sit "on top" of the Internet, said Chris Ciabarra, Authenticated Reality's co-founder, in an interview last year. "Everybody knows who everybody is," he said. So, when Facebook announced this week that its site was, once again, home to inauthentic pages and accounts designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, I contacted Ciabarra to find out how the company was doing. But, he said Wednesday that he had shut down the startup just a month after its debut. He said people who had heard about Authenticated Reality from media reports were visiting the firm's offices in California and threatening employees. (The addresses were listed on the website.) "It was getting kind of scary," he told me. "They were thinking we were taking their freedom away because they had to sign up using a driver's license. They thought we were trying to follow them."
The day that I have to use my real, legal name on the Internet no matter what it is I'm doing, and no anonymity allowed, will be the LAST day I ever use the Internet, and I know I'm FAR from being alone in this.
The claim of knowing if you're interacting with a real person isn't verifiable via uploading an ID...
I love my anonymity and wouldn't want to give it up.
File this under obviously bad idea category. The Internet is full of crazy, so you don't want to tie anything to your real life identity.
Sounds like a great browser, for other people to use. I'm guessing that the people showing up and threatening employees were either early investors or creditors.
This got my attention.
Why would one need (or want) to provide proof of identity to use a browser? So the company can pass a permanent, unique ID cookie and data to *every* site you visit? So you can be tracked *everywhere*? I imagine their revenue model relied on selling your browsing data to every/anyone. So that sounds like fun.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Who forced anyone to sign up to this browser? If the people who sign up *want* to interact in an environment where there is no anonymity, that is their right.
sounds more like an excuse to not admit to having a shitty business model
So long as no one is forced to use this browser to get access to anything they must access, there is nothing to see here.
The danger lurked in this browser eventually becoming mandatory for certain sites — the government-run ones. And even then, only when the access did not need authentication before.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What's to stop one person from signing up legitimately and then giving copies of the browser to others who did not register? Does the browser check IDs? If so, does that slow it down? We've got people here in the USA who don't want to be identified for anything, so yeah, not real surprised that some people were threatened by this and got that point across. On the other hand, I was almost thinking that all the dumb "solutions in search of a problem" ideas for companies had surely been taken by now. but I am wrong about that.
Whoever thought this was a good ideal was absolutely nuts. Surprised it lasted this long.
When they say "developed" they mean a stupid skin over webkit, that forces you to log into a centralized account on startup?
Wow what a fucken tremendous achievement
Must be the case, because you would need to give your actual name. Assuming you are not paying in bitcoin or something.
I guess you never paid a bill online either. Pretty sure they wont accept a fake name.
There had been some way to hide their identity....
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As should be the fate of any who try to take away anonymity on the Internet.
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As should be the fate of any who try to take away anonymity on the Internet.
No one took away your ability to remain anonymous; they gave people a chance to have a verified ID if they wanted it. I would pass but threatening the company’s employees because you don’t looe their approach is full on nut case. Your arguement seems to be “anyone who disagrees with my view of how the internet should work should be threatened into submission.” Do you really think violence or threats is how to run the internet?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I don't have to give my name to use Chrome, Firefox, or even Edge. Admittedly, I have to give my real name & shipping address to Amazon.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Most of you are too young to remember, but once upon a time, everyone's real-life identity was transparent on the Internet. Everyone used their real names, most people even included their phone number and work address. If all you had was an email address (bang path), you could use it to finger them and get their info. Being able to skirt around this and do things anonymously was considered a bug which needed to be fixed.
As I recall it, anonymity took off when AOL joined Usenet. An AOL account granted you 5 usernames, ostensibly so a family could share a single AOL account. But a lot of AOL users used the extra identities to create pseudonyms so they could post on Usenet anonymously. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this among the pro-real identity folks, and a lot of heated arguments, but I don't remember there being any death threats over it. And eventually the pro-anonymity side won out.
It's interesting that the pro-anonymity folks aren't as tolerant of opinions different than theirs. For a democracy to function, there has to be a free exchange of ideas. People with different opinions must be allowed to express and practice what they think is a better way to do things. Their idea should be evaluated by each individual who hears it, and either accepted or dismissed. An individual or a group proactively preventing other individuals from learning about a different idea by threatening the people advocating them is corrosive to democracy, and will lead to a tyranny by an apparent majority. Nobody will know if the "majority opinion" is really held by the majority, because everyone is too afraid to contradict it.
Brings out a lot of loons and empowers them. There's a science fiction book called Distractions by Bruce Sterling that covered this. In it you could trigger an assassin by spreading conspiracy theories on the net to naturally receptive individuals. If you keep encouraging the crazies they'll start getting violent
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...QED?
-Styopa
Threats were received at their address here:
San Francisco Office:
529 Sausalito Blvd Sausalito
CA 94965
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Do you think my name really is Rick Schumann? LOL if you do.
Why should what I post here on Slashdot be part of some permanent Public Record attached to my real legal name? So you can hunt me down and threaten me because I said you were a fucktard and should STFU? What about you? Is your real name "Pablo Max"? If so what's to stop me from hunting you down and beating you within an inch of your life because you dared to disagree with me or otherwise annoyed me somehow? What's that, you say, that's just a 'handle' and not your real name? LOL, guess you like you anonymity too, don't you, 'Pablo'? LOL relax I'm not mad at you or threatening you or planning to threaten you, just making a point.
As stated above: 'official' business, and you exercising freedom of speech/freedom of expression on the Internet are two different things entirely. Or are we living in China right now, and every gods-be-damned word we post on the Internet is being scrutinized and 'graded' and being used to leverage our behavior by affecting our actual quality of life? Do you want to live in a world like that? You can see why, if things went that way, I'd dump the Internet over it.
Did you watch that show Seth MacFarlane created, The Orville? Did you see the episode where they found a planet where their supercharged version of social media was literally being used to decide whether people lived or died, literally crowdsourcing justice? An extreme example done to make a point, but would you want to live in a world like that, where one joking statement taken out of context literally ruins your life, because the whole world can see it? Even here in the United States, would you open up a Twitter account under your real name with real address and contact information, then proceed to openly criticize Donald Trump and his administration right to his face? You'd be lucky to live out the week and you know it. That's why the ability to have anonymity on the Internet is important.
The ruling elite who want to destroy all opposition is everywhere.
They are the fascists.
You never used Usenet, did you.
There were SOME ways to identify people, when they chose to be.
And sometimes admins would even help with that, usually because people had access through universities, and had signed agreements...
However, it was far Far FAR from the organised monitored recorded clusterfuck of privacy rape that it is these days.
So, just checking here.
We would be paying them to provide them with personal details, and a lockin gateway to the internet controlled by them?
Hard to see how people took offense to that, I wonder if they had also considered marketing online 'security' cameras for
every room in peoples houses to make sure they didnt do anything 'bad' there either.
Hell, if we paid them enough perhaps they could just develop implantable live tracker chips we could have inserted at birth,
with all the data streaming directly to their servers (for our own good of course).
They should be considered saviors of society!
WTF? struck gold?? never heard of this company of the app and if I had no fucking way would I or anyone I know have willingly used it. I can't imagine any market demand for this and lets face it, if there was no way they would be shutting down so easy. Sounds like an excuse for a failed venture.
death threats? really?
because there was no other browser available they could use that didn't require an id verification.
it was a bad idea, i agree with that, but it should have just died out because nobody (in their right mind) would use it.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
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Why did they so desperately need to use this specific browser, that they were willing to kill over a ID requirement?
It's not like they were having to provide ID for Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge, Opera, or whatever. Was there some "special promise" from this new browser???
Ding ding ding.. I think we have the real answer.
Who the hell would get that? Not me. Too much hassle.
That episode of the Orville was one of the most useful things to show up on television, ever. I wish it had gotten some press. Unfortunately, being able to whip people into a frenzy on social media is too valuable a tool. It follows that we are a Republic for many of the same reasons. Democracy is important, but mechanisms do need to be in place to temper moments of mob hysteria.