Trouble makers are people who join communities for the all the wrong reasons. It could be someone pretending to be someone else, or someone that uses the community in order to perpetrate a scam, or that uses the community as a platform to defame or discredit someone else they have had a personal disagreement with, or that uses the community to send spam messages to other members.

In cases like these the only sensible thing to do is to remove that person from the community and try to prevent them from ever joining again. Depending on what happened details could also be sent to the authorities. However, banning someone is not always as easy as it sounds. These people will often try and register again using a different email address or cell number. With the widespread and cheap availability of prepaid cell numbers in South Africa (R1 per SIM card, no ID required) someone can get a new cell number for very little cost and effort. Getting a new email address is even easier. You can sign up for a web based email address from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others for no charge. Something that we have used in the past with some success to identify people is to require members to produce a valid ID number. However even this can be ineffective if the trouble maker has access to a bunch of valid ID numbers that belong to other people.

One method that would work very effectively, and that we believe will become more and more important in the future, is the ability to identify the actual device that was used to register on the community. This device would typically be a PC, or a laptop computer, or a cellphone for mobile communities. In the case of a cellphone the IMEI number would be an ideal form of identity. Unfortunately, at this point in time it is not possible for us to detect the IMEI number remotely. The ability to identify the actual device would allow community operators to store a reputation for the device and to ban that device from joining the community again. Although this would still not be fool proof, it would make it much harder and more expensive to register again after being banned. Instead of just buying a new SIM card (for R1) or getting a new email address (for free), the trouble maker would now need to purchase a new phone or PC or laptop. In most cases this would not be worth their while.

As a next step the various community operators could agree to share device reputation information so that if a device is banned from one community, other operators could elect to ban it from their community as well (possibly also taking into account the reason for the ban elsewhere or the severity of the offence). The easiest way to do this would be to set up an independent 3rd party that is responsible for collating and sharing the device reputation information. As more and more communities and other internet based services start to rely on these 3rd party reputation providers, it will become more and more important to ensure that you maintain a good reputation for your devices. Devices with a poor reputation will be prevented from using more and more services which will greatly diminish the value of owning the device. Just like you need to take care to maintain your own personal reputation in the real world, so you will need to maintain your reputation in the virtual world through the devices that you use to connect and participate.