I have examined the security questions for Hotmail, Yahoo! and online RPG Second Life and dicovered that there is persumption existed in the sets of security questions, although their procedure for signing up an account is quite similar. My interpretation is, the security question is like a kind of "questionnaire" provided by web service provider, which has targeted on their potential market, is also a hint behind of positioning of the company. Yahoo! and Second Life have the same approach of to ask the users about the information of their childhood, such as "Who was your childhood hero?" or "What city were you born in?", based on the assumption that the most memorised events were occured in one's childhood. However, Hotmail users are "assumed" to be more likely socially engaged, as one of the questions is mention your "two best friends" etc. These two kinds of security questions indicating the psychological emphasis is taken place, and I guess it also indicated that two different marketing approaches were attempted. I guess Second Life is targeting at teenagers and Yahoo! is exploring the large potential market of young adults, or "kidults"(who have great memories for their childhood, and those memento is also their favourite), to have more uses on their services. Hotmail has slightly twisted its strategy and points towards everyone who is highly engaged with social activities, as its bundle of Windows Live Messenger. The security questions and answers provide not only the protection for the users, from the hackers and viruses; but also indicating now what the trend is (what products teenagers love)and the service-providers' targets.
In the "I live in..." section of Second Life, the online RPG dominated countries are up on the top of the choices besides UK and US - Germany, South Korea and Japan. This issue is not associated with racism, but I think it differentiates the countries, according their proportion of online game players in population. Or slightly stratifies the "developed countries" and "developing counytries" in terms of economic development.
The "default" research of Lavalife has assumed that the searcher is heterosexual, in their 20s or 30s above, and their only purpose is for casual dating, since the original categoriesare set up as finding someone with an opposite gender. I think the presumption that the only purpose for Love-matching website such as Lavalife is to provide an alternative place for people, to develop ideal matches in online community.
Finally, the creation of account gives us an different identity in virtual world, and often computer is always associated with maths. Verification is crucial before you have actual access of an account. (There are something I want to share...)
Verify if you are not a robot...
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/chinese.engadget.com/media/2008/09/0077.jpg
Please choose the 3 most "hottest" person, despite you are not in Lavalife. http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/chinese.engadget.com/media/2008/09/0076.jpg
Do we have anyone who study geometry?
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/chinese.engadget.com/media/2008/09/0079.jpg
An IQ test...
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/chinese.engadget.com/media/2008/09/0082.jpg
Can anyone pass a magnifier to me?
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/chinese.engadget.com/media/2008/09/0087.jpg
I remember that one I had done in MATH1050...
(From: http://%22http//chinese.engadget.com/2008/09/02/15-bt-captcha/%22)
Conclusion: the word verification is indeed crucial!
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i forgot to mention this in my post yesterday, but luckily KaHung noticed it too: I thought it was really funny/interesting how in the second life verification you have to 'prove' that you are not a robot! haha. i think windows and yahoo don't like to put it quite like that way.
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