norm@netcom.com (Norman Hardy) writes:

I just got around to Greg Broiles interesting note where he describes his practice of using several account names. He feels apologetic about it. Authors have used pen-names for a long time without opprobrium. The mathematician Eric Temple Bell wrote science fiction under the pen name "John Taine". Several authors have written different styles of works, one pen name per style. As I understand the law there is nothing illegal in using an alias as long as the purpose is not fraud, which is already illegal. One must protect the reputation of each alias. Where aliases are common negative reputations loose their bite but the benefits of positive reputations provide incentives for good behavior.

How does everyone else feel about the idea of maintaining multiple accounts as a method of maintaining pseudo-anonymity? I commonly use two accounts on each of my systems, one by my real name, one by my alias, which is the same everywhere. The purpose of this is to allow me to send or recieve mail to/from people who I know from other bbs's and such and relay information in that way without giving them my real name. as greg pointed out, it's very easy to have multiple accounts; some of us run sites that give us the ability to create pseudo-users, and pseudo-sites for that matter, and others can make use of public bbs's with net access. I know of a few bbs's in my area (silicon valley) that offer net access and don't do any sort of validation, making it very simple to set up and maintain multiple accounts. How do people feel about doing something like this rather than using remailers since it seems that a lot of problems come up when people run remailers and start getting complaints? -Mike -- Mike Sherwood internet: mike@EGFABT.ORG uucp: ...!sgiblab!egfabt!mike