Concealed identities

As far as my favorite TV series is concerned, I know Gossip girl was a scandalous website manned by an anonymous person who focused on the lives of the wealthy and the elite teenagers of no other than the Upper East Side, Manhattan City.

As the series went into the nitty-gritty season after season, I patiently wait for the person behind the scheming website. It was shocking to know that the person himself was a trusted man of the clique who wanted to be part of them. It was a complete irony.

Serena and Blair's friendship is none of my business really while they are being talked about on the site with boldness. While they have been the talk of the town for so long on an anonymous website, I fear for my own identity on more or less the same parameters. Little did I know that some internet users are using their authority to trespass over my privacy and looking into my friends' accounts which I deem is my responsibility to protect.

The situation is normal. I am no far from them and the other students of the University of the Philippines (UP) - Cebu. Our identities have been trespassed by anonymous accounts on Facebook with names I shall withhold yet relate to the nature of being a student inside the university. Their posts contain criticisms and mild bashes on the running candidates of the two contending political parties inside the university. While it seems very exciting to have an undercover spy waiting for its cue to spread it's good news, ill effects have been made.

These accounts look into other people's statuses and photos which they make as a basis for their judgment on matters involving politics and more. They reply to comments of real individuals as if they are part of the conversation. They watch and listen, taking advantage of their animosity over the vulnerable.

Why am I sharing a university problem to the rest of the community? One word: caution

I do not know if the same scenario applies to other university elections but sooner or later, the outdoor campaigns of the candidates will migrate online. I'd like to believe that these accounts were patterned after the Anonymous Philippines which I presume still exist up to today. Given that, it creates a stir in the emotions of the innocents whose sole purpose is to express on cyberspace. There is fear, threat and anxiety. However public it may be, we can be as private as we choose to be.

Yet there remains the responsibility of being cautious on whatever we write, post, or tweet on the internet. Granted the freedom that we are enjoying for now on the internet, we have the responsibility of taking care not to trample on somebody else's. Using a fake name or hiding under an anonymous identity gives the person the liberty to say whatever he/she or it wants to say, taking into consideration that he/she or it does not have any obligation to protect rights.

If responsibility is not exercised, then we are bound to have a chaotic cyberspace where highly intellectual individuals trained to be computer literate are becoming barbaric. The more civilized we are, the more we attain the freedom that we want. And that does not include hiding under a fake name. Even Facebook rules mandate on the use only of a real identity, an angle which we can always look at.

If they are not brave enough to reveal themselves, then freedom has lost its sense. Come out of the closet before it's too late.

**Published in the Freeman Newspaper on March 5, 2013