Risks in Security
As VR advances so do the potential risks with security and privacy, many being unique to VR. Depending on the software used to power certain virtual reality environments, users’ personal information, passwords, and chat logs might not be well protected or encrypted. This issue isn’t as much of a problem in larger VR companies and enterprises that make information security a high priority.
Risks in Privacy
Other than information security, there is the risk of identity theft and impersonation in VR worlds. This is because users can actively change what their avatars look like and in doing so, impersonate another user. Companies so far have come up with a couple solutions to this issue, such as requiring an actual picture of the user or an active webcam while the user is playing, not allowing users to change their names, or limiting the extent of how much users can change their avatars. Another security risk that only applies to VR is the risk of users changing the environment itself. This can potentially cause disruptions in training, meetings, and the workplace. In terms of privacy, VR opens a whole new world of concerns because every single action, message, movement, and interaction in a VR environment can me tracked and monitored. Companies can then use this information for their benefit like data in experiments. This has sparked public outcry in the past with Facebook and Oculus where they kept changing privacy policies and it was leaked that Facebook had been putting their users under psychological experiments. All these issues pose real threats to the future of VR and need to be addressed for VR to be used to its fullest.