Re: Anonymous vs false IDs

[dmandl@lehman.com (David Mandl)]

> From: kovar@nda.com (David Kovar)
> 
>   There is a lot of effort being put into creating tools to mask identities.
> I'm curious why people don't go a different route - creating a false
> electronic identity? If you have control over your own system, it is easy
> enough to create an account. Lacking that, there are a lot of companies
> out there offering low cost accounts on Unix systems with full Internet
> access. Why not get an account in a different name rather than using
> anonymous remailers?

If you use five different identities, why waste your money paying for five
accounts, especially if some of them are used only infrequently?

Why have a full UNIX account (like my account on PANIX, say) for an
identity that won't need to do anything but send out a couple of email
messages now and then?

What if you create and kill off personas relatively frequently?

Having everything centralized seems like the most logical way to go--don't
forget, separate accounts would mean setting up separate .profile files,
copying code from one place to another all the time, keeping duplicate
copies of things, etc., etc.  The exception would be when you have
identities or "lives" that are truly separate, with little overlap, but
even then I'd prefer having full access to all my files and robots in one
place all the time.

If I had an Internet connection on my own box at home, sure, it might be
more convenient to segregate things in separate accounts, but most people
don't have that luxury yet.

   --Dave.