Hijacking Avatars

As the internet becomes one big huge social networking blob, the avatar is becoming the standard for visible user identity. Massive social networking sites like MyBlogLog have created repositories of avatar snapshots that are distributed across other sites in sidebars and blog comments.

The use of a central repostitory like MyBlogLog to pull user avatars to show next to comments in a blog makes things more interesting and is very easy to do. There are plenty of plugins for Wordpress that do just what they are advertised to do - stick avatars from other sites next to comments. One of the most popular Wordpress plugins to do this is MyAvatar.

So what’s the big deal?

Most of the central repositories for avatars like MyBlogLog associate an email address or URL with an avatar. That’s how blogs like Wordpress pull the avatar from the central site. Wordpress requires an email address for a person to leave a comment, the Wordpress plugin matches the commentator’s email address or URL dropped in the comment form to the central avatar repository like MyBlogLog and shows an avatar next to the comment.

All in all, it’s a nice thing for blog readers to be able to associate an avatar, or picture, of a person with their comment. Unless of course the person who’s picture is stuck next to the comment never really made the comment.

For the hypothetical that really isn’t a hypothetical at all because it happens everyday - let’s say your boyfriend is suddenly no longer your boyfriend but knows your email address or your blog URL and that you have a MyBlogLog avatar (or other avatar somewhere on file like at Gravatar.com).

Your boyfriend that is no longer your boyfriend starts using your email address while dropping comments on blogs that use the central avatar repositories. Maybe he’s dropping your avatar on blogs that are frequented by your circle of friends and your picture keeps popping up next to things you never said.

So what can you do?

If you have an avatar at one of these places, not much. By placing your avatar on file with one of these services that makes the information available, you are more or less assuming the risk.

If you are a blog owner, although you may not be liable legally for any mispresentations of a third party in the comments of your blog, you should at least be aware of how your blog works and potential problems you might face.