Korea has long been hailed as a pioneer in the field of Internet technology. The country consistently ranks top of surveys on technology use and virtually everyone in the population has access to broadband Internet. It may sound like geek paradise, but recent events in Korea have shown that there are problems as well.
One major problem is finding a balance between users identifying themselves on-line, but still remaining safe from ID theft. Last week, a huge scandal developed over the mass theft of Korean ID numbers. These were later used to register for online game services provided by NCSoft, the largest gaming company in Korea. The games involved are Lineage and Lineage 2. Between them they have some 3 million subscribers and 100 thousand users online at any one time during peak hours.
The main issue is that in Korea, users must supply their name and 13-digit national ID number in order to play. The ID number contains personal encoded information including date of birth and gender and has been in use for the last 40 years. According to Korean online security experts, the average Korean belongs to 27 different online services, most of which will ask for this ID number when registering. In December and January, more than 200 thousand ID numbers were stolen from an online service, reportedly an online retail or auction site, The IDs were later used to set up free trial accounts for the online games, and it's thought that Chinese “gaming farms” created the accounts in order to make money out of the online gaming world. Gaming farms usually involve low-paid workers sitting in front of computers and doing repetitive actions to “produce” items or goods in virtual worlds. These goods are later sold to players in other games for real money.
The Korean government has already hit out at Korean online service providers for demanding the national ID number when registering, and the Ministry of Information and Communication has promised a crackdown. Officials also promised to check the online community for potential breaches and leaks of sensitive ID information. The companies would be reluctant to change to another system of ID verification, primarily because setting up new databases would incur high costs.. Although there are many security issues to be addressed, Korea is clearly striving to find a balance between a thriving Internet community and the need for better protection of sensitive data online.
