While the metaverse has some exciting and enjoyable features for our society, it also comes with a lot of obstacles and threats. The metaverse is a virtual environment governed by the internet where people may socialize and play. The metaverse, like most things, has its own set of risks and drawbacks. In this post, I analyze the threats in the metaverse and provide a list of measures to keep ourselves safe. Continue reading to find out more.
The metaverse is a persistent, online, three-dimensional environment that integrates numerous virtual spaces. Although the metaverse does not yet exist in its entirety, several platforms do have metaverse-like aspects. Video games presently give the most realistic metaverse experience. By holding in-game events and building virtual economies, developers have pushed the boundaries of what a game can be.
While there are numerous advantages of the metaverse, there are also several risks that follow. Some of them include:
1. Harassment And Cyberbullying
The topic of mental health and well-being in the metaverse has already made headlines. Young adults and teens are still vulnerable to cyberbullying. In reality, the impacts of cyberbullying have been well-documented and may range from a poor feeling of self-worth to suicidal impulses, particularly among teens. According to experts, because the human experience in the metaverse is as genuine as our experience in the physical world, pain and suffering are as real and severe.
2. Problems With Mental Health
Other hazards are more difficult to prevent in a virtual environment. Many free-to-play games, for example, rely on advertisements to fund their growth. Malicious people may hypothetically replace the advertisements with pictures that cause motion sickness or even epileptic convulsions. Images like this might be sent to a virtual reality headset.
3. Theft Of Identity
Many experts are afraid that if rigorous security measures are not adopted, identity theft in the metaverse may become even easier. In the real world, identity theft is now a multibillion-dollar industry; recent research estimated that identity theft damages were $24 billion.
4. Companies Collecting Unauthorised Data
Your personal information is also collected by legitimate businesses. Virtual reality, on the other hand, has the potential to push data collecting to a level that may be out of reach for some. Virtual reality headsets, for example, might hypothetically allow third parties to collect more sensitive personal data including voiceprint data, biometric data, and even facial geometry.
5. Attacks Via Ransomware
Ransomware is malicious software that encrypts your data and prevents you or anyone else from accessing them. It will then display a message demanding you to pay a particular amount of money to regain access to your data, thus the term “ransomware.” Your metaverse profile will have a lot more information than a regular social media page; it will also include a lot of sensitive information.
6. Perceptions Of The Real World Also Change
According to a study done at Stanford University, both virtual reality and augmented reality, two of the foundations that will create the metaverse’s basis, can influence how individuals see the actual world. Participants in that study, for example, avoided sitting in a chair where a computer-generated avatar had been seen in their AR environment.
7. Deepfake Videos
In a world where information is king, experts are concerned about bogus information campaigns delivered via deep falsified audio and video snippets endangering our country’s security. Deep Fakes are modified video or audio clips that appear and/or sound like someone else.
8. Attacks Using Social Engineering
The activity of mentally influencing someone into giving sensitive information is known as social engineering. Because of the large quantity of personal data that will be kept in the metaverse, it might become a gold mine for hackers trying to sell personal data on the Dark Web. Education will be the foundation for metaverse security management in the end.
9. Shared Spaces Come With Their Own Set Of Dangers
The metaverse is built on the idea of bringing people together. While this might be beneficial in certain respects, it can also raise issues. In the metaverse, you will have to deal with people who have contrary viewpoints. People behave differently in a virtual environment than they do in the actual world, according to studies. This is particularly evident in the field of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), where veteran players frequently criticize newcomers and even abuse girls.
10. New Applications Will Need To Be Vetted
New apps, like today’s Internet, have the potential to disrupt our digital life leading to digital risk. The enormous volume of sensitive data that will be retained in a metaverse scenario, however, can make the harm considerably worse. We’ll need to come up with ways to ensure that all new apps are scanned for harmful code.
Conclusion
These are only a few of the top ten metaverse risks, which also include security problems. As we develop our virtual real-life, where practically everything is done digitally, the list will undoubtedly grow and adapt. While a unified metaverse is certainly a long way off, we can already identify trends that might lead to its establishment. It’s unclear whether we’ll ever truly arrive at a metaverse. However, we may already participate in metaverse-like initiatives and continue to integrate blockchain into our daily lives in the interim.
Blog Author – Rohit Boda, Managing Director, J.B.Boda Group
