Opinion: My Name Is Billy-Bob -- Or Is It?

Good morning. My name is Billie...uh, Barbara...and I'm an online liar.

And if you're smart, so are you.

Like all Web surfers, I am constantly being asked to register in order to gain access to online information. Many, if not most, of these registration requests are perfectly legitimate -- they are from organizations that want to track the number of individuals using their site, or want to get some information about the kind of people who are using their site, or who simply want to make sure that there is some rudimentary way to contact their users in case of problems.

However, there are also less savory sites that want the information in order to sell spam lists, or send spam themselves -- or worse. These sites may look like legitimate personal or professional sites, but if you give them your e-mail address, you are going to find yourself inundated with "useful" messages about products, services, and offers. If you're taken in to the extent that you give them more information -- say, your phone number, or address -- then you may really have problems.

As a result, I've established an "alias" e-mail account with a free service, which I use to register with any site that I am not already very familiar with -- or, for that matter, that I don't intend to use more than once. I try to be fair -- if I find myself regularly visiting a site that is both useful and legit, I will often re-register using my real name. But I must admit that I'm registered at a lot of sites in the name of my alias.

Is this fair? Perhaps not. I recently had an email exchange with the owner of a site which had been attacked by hackers, spammers, and other impolite users, and which, as a result, is asking registrants for not only their real names and emails, but home addresses and phone numbers as well. I expressed my appreciation of his difficulties, and explained why I was unwilling to give personal information to an unfamiliar site. He, on the other hand, thanked me for the explanation, and complained about the "culture of lying and deception" that made his rules necessary.

What is the answer? I'm not sure there is one. The Web, like the rest of the world, is always going to contain a certain percentage of thieves, con artists, and liars. I guess we're all going to have to do our best to live with the necessary -- and unnecessary -- Internet lies.