I know I’m not alone in committing identity theft against my imaginary selves. Since no studies exist, I took an informal poll involving 50 friends and colleagues and, although I admit it’s not very scientific, it was revealing. More than half of respondents admitted they invent some or all of the information they provide to online news sites.
Some samples:
“I use a bogus identity (usually Margaret Thatcher) and a fake e-mail address. I usually list my birthday as 1/1/1970 (the beginning of the Unix era) and my ZIP code as 90210.”
“I have my Yahoo spam-catcher account I use for all those things, and my nom de guerre is James Bond. Or I put Dwight Eisenhower living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE in D.C.” —Adam L. Penenbarg —What, Me Register? (Wired)
I’m often an Albanian woman born in 1900. I have a yahoo e-mail address that’s already overwhelmed spam, because I only use it when I’m not sure what will happen to the address.
Amazon.com knows a lot about the real me, in part because of the book-rating feature that Amazon uses to recommend related books. I gain something from that service, so I don’t mind giving up some personal info for it. Registering for news sites is, on the other hand, just a bother.
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I made the mistake of placing my e-mail address once into something. I forget what it was now. I had so much spam and ad junk I couldn't find my real world e-mail. Thankfully, I have a daughter that seems to know her way around a computer very well. I tell her I did something stupid, I get "the look", but she fixes it so she can say remember when.. Since then I have also created a false self for registering places. I really like the 92 year old snowboarding spinster. I swear I see some of them where we ski every winter, usually as I'm hanging onto a tree for dear life! Not nearly as cool as the snowboarder, or the Albanian, mine is 78 years old, and is a Llama behavior instructor.