Proof of identity

is needed to get a passport, open a bank account, get a licence to drive and many other things. Now there are suggestions that proof of identity should be required to open or maintain any sort of social media account.

This would stop cyber-bullying - or so those suggesting it claim. It wouldn't. There will always be determined people who would find their way around such a move.

Several years ago two students at a local primary school hacked into the school's computer system. They had access to all the data in the system, including some very sensitive information about their peers, about the staff, about the school's accounts and much more. They did it not out of mischief so much as to show how easy it was to do it. These two boys were not even twelve at the time. Security was upgraded but  I do not doubt that there are other able students in the school now who could find their way in to the system.

I know another boy, one who has caused a considerable amount of trouble, who hacked into a computer at the behest of his grandmother. He admitted to me later that it was "dead easy". That frightens me.

My day job involves working with people all over the world. The system we have set up involves some fairly serious security. This is not because anyone intends anyone else some harm, just the opposite. There are people however who would prefer others not to know that they are spending two weeks of their four weeks annual leave doing a stint in a hospital in a far off place or that they are helping to repair a mosque when their normal place of worship is a synagogue. That's commonsense. I don't know how many of them have social media accounts for the sole purpose of discussing the issues they come up against. I have never met most of them and I never will. Could they all provide the "100 points" of ID proposed by the people making the suggestion that proof of identity is needed to have a social media account? I doubt it. One of the people I work with on a regular basis doesn't even have a birth certificate.

Proof of identity is not the answer to cyber bullying. It is not going to stop it. Devices will still get hacked, indeed it will encourage hacking. People who have been in abusive relationships might actually be more at risk.

I don't know what the answer is but it might help if the police had greater powers to "search" when bullying is reported.