But, it would be a mighty pain if you went overseas and forgot to set Gmail to ‘holiday mode’.

I think of it like the pied piper. Its not the piper or the pipe that attracted the rats – it was the music. Companies create compelling reasons to enter the metaverse and make huge assumptions on the part of those accessing their offerings. The focus on the least-worst scenario for themselves, then the users.

It seems inevitable that the internet as we know it now – popularised by commercial offerings and now sucking in so called ‘crowd content’ via social networks will suffer a Snow Crash.

I think any real change in the current fraud will come not from more virus checkers or browser blockers, but from devices that act as agents for us, creating a DMZ between us an what ever parts of the metaverse we choose to use.

My bank was advised of my recent trip to Indonesia, for the simple reason that they monitor unusual activity and wanted to know about it. I felt very well serviced and supported.

Thanks Stu.

If they were to use a proxy, they would have to use a proxy in the victim’s country.

You could also extend the restriction for logon as not just from your country, but from your chosen Internet Service Provider(s). You could save the specific domains you’d like to allow access from – eg your home and your work domains – but not from Starbucks or McDonalds (or anywhere else).

You then could choose to apply these restrictions only to your vulnerable accounts, leaving you more flexibilty with web services that you are less worried about security-wise.

The point is, this idea is a simple springboard. It’s not the be-all-and-end-all solution to this massive problem, but it’s a pretty good, easy to implement, inexpensive solution that can be extended.

I must admit that when I recently opened a Facebook account for the first time (to keep in contact with my son overseas) I did not give true information for my school or date of birth. While I could see the benefits to Facebook of such information (their ability to match potential contacts or associates is amazing), I really couldn’t see myself giving such valuable information freely.

Your idea to restrict logons etc from the country of registration is good but a small question; would a proxy ip site be able to confuse the country that the logon was coming from? I don’t know enough about it but I have read of these sites being used to fool other sites and download movies etc supposed to be for USA only or similar.

There is no doubt that that the whole identity issue is a huge one. Possibly another thought I have is that my Credit Union has issued me with a small electronic device that gives me a 6 digit code (different every time, changes every 60 seconds) that I must use in addition to my normal password to access my account. Not sure how it could be implemented for Facebook etc but I could see my ISP being able to do this sort of thing; certainly, to me, every bank should be doing something similar.