Thieves, credit, and our cyber identities.

   When we go online to our favorite websites these days, more often than not we log in to an account. Some accounts  are used for apparently no reason than to spam you. In return, you get funny titles and irrelevant "awards" for visiting a site or posting so often. Others are used for tracking progress, monetary transactions, or to prove you aren't a computer. One thing that holds true is we have been creating and internet identity for ourselves.

We create accounts on websites, sometimes because we have to, but mainly to establish ourselves. More often than not, people keep the same name across all their accounts (especially in gaming, we want people to know how super awesome we are at every game), whether its for a message board, Xbox  Live Account, or e-mail. We want a unique identity for ourselves, with a name we created that we aren't always connected to in real life. Our internet identities tend be an escape from our real ones. Many people, especially gamers, have internet friends that they have never met in real life. This is all fine and dandy, however, some of these accounts that we use require certain bits of information that link you back to your real life. Things like your address, middle name, credit card numbers- this is all information that we need to make sure we are doubly careful in protecting. As the user we can do so much - have unique passwords, don't share information, and generally be cautious about what websites we use.

     In this day of having an internet identity, convenience has become a blessing and curse. Just think, would you rather, A.) use your credit card from the comfort of your house to buy a game, or B.) Get off the couch, drive to the store, wait in line, buy the game, and then drive back? The lazy in us says lets go with A because its easier, and there's nothing wrong with that, at least from your end. When we are allowed the convenience of being able to use a credit card with a company over the internet, we should be able to without worry or fear. I believe it should be the companies responsibility to protect the information we give them. With an online money transaction like buying a game, your full name, billing address, and card information are transferred and stored into a company database. This is information we don't want in the wrong hands, and of recently, its has been.

     There have been many attacks against large gaming companies recently (Bioware, Sega, Sony) and this could cause some unwanted problems for a lot of us. Internet thieves have been hacking into the databases of these large companies and compromising personal info for many users in these databases. There is no telling what information has been taken and for what reason, but there is a leak. At first glance, you may not be so worried about your account. Let's say you had a PSN account that was compromised but you never used your credit card with it, no big deal right? Well, what if you used the same email address for another  account in which you did? A thief with the right know how, and your email address could potentially scam his way into your credit card number. Then it's game over man. In you are like most people and you try to make your life simple by using 1 or 2 email addresses but with all the same information, you could be in danger if even one of your accounts gets compromised.

Now, this is not an article to scare people off the internet, this is a wake up call. We have been so accustomed to the internet infusing into our lives that we might have become careless. Until recently, we have felt pretty damn secure using our credit card on the internet with big name companies and we had every right to. But now, there is an alarming amount of attacks in a short period of times and I think it's time we re-evaluate how we do business. Until cyber-security gets back under control, we might have to suck it up and drive out to the video game store for our purchases. Let's face it, they carry most of what we need, subscription cards, marketplace currency, games,and we can pay for all of that with cash if we so choose. We shouldn't be scared of having an internet identity or participating in e-commerce, we just need to be careful. Some of the companies we have had so much faith in for security have shown that they aren't infallible.The point here, is that we might want to take a look our internet identity and try to tidy up any loose ends. It could save you a huge headache.

MMMEEEEEEDDDDDDDIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCC!!!!!

Yes that's right, that was the distressed slightly prepubescent war time cry for help for a fallen comrade. Or, what I like to call, complete victory on Battlefield Bad Company 2.

The other night my friends and I decided we were going to play some BC2, however, I am without a mic so I usually just play the medic. My job is to just run around and revive people after they have been shot, run over, blown to oblivion, etc. Its an easy job when you are without communication because all you have to do is keep others alive while they do all the work. We play a game type called Rush. One team attacks with 75 lives for the team, the other team defends with unlimited lives. Attackers have to go plant a bomb at two way points before they run out of lives. Though, when someone gets revived, it does not subtract a life from the total lives left. After both charges have been planted, two new targets pop up and the lives are reset back to 75. Well little did we know that we would be beating teams in record times for us with what happened next.

After a few rounds of thoroughly pissing off the other teams with having a competent medic around, I get this crazy idea. What if the four of us played as medics. Now let me give you a better idea of the medic class. The  medic's prime weapon is a light machine gun, usually an m60. He is also equipped defibrillators to revive fallen teammates, and he also carries a healthpack that can be thrown on the ground and will heal nearby teammates. That last bit a good tactic to prolong firefights and sometimes will give you an advantage.

In BC2, not only are you trying to meet the objectives, you also have a personal score for how well you do. Simple things like kills, assist, revives, blowing up the objectives, will give you points. With medics, you get the same amount of points for a revive as someone would a kill, and you get about half that when you heal someone. So there is potential for racking up a good score. Little did we know we would blow everyone out of the water.

So, the first round with all medics, the four of us are just goofing around getting good kick out of constantly reviving each other when one person goes down. Then we realized how effective the health packs were when four medics dropped them. We called this tactic the health bubble. This was getting interesting.

We charge the first station, plant the charge and wait. We dropped the four health packs around us and lit up anything that moved with our m60s. If someone died, I'd revive him. If I died, someone would revive me. If he died, so on and so forth. We had a nice little system. Remember, because they were revives, our lives left meter was not going down. It was as if we almost had infinite lives. Nothing could stop us. Then 4 other player who we had to contact with on our team started to join us as medics. We ended up with a majority of our team as medics running from objective to objective taking them out in record time. No one could stop us, snipers didn't have the rate of fire to take all of us out. The assault and engineers were getting leveled by our m60s. The medic ruled this day.

I could only imagine the frustration the other team met when they run  straight into a team of medics who are just as focused, if not more focused, on keeping their teammates alive than they are focused on killing tangos. So, important lesson, never underestimate the medic.