And they come like flies to chocolate. Bees to a good-looking pot of honey.

It's ridiculous, this issue of anonymity. And unnerving that I (24, male, Mumbai) can become Tanya (19, female, Delhi) in less than the time taken to say 'transsexual' out loud. But I did, anyway. And quite liked it, too.

Things get a little more harrowing when you sit back and think of the repercussions though. Love is a big issue on the Internet, with couples ostensibly falling all over themselves tying the knot with buddies they find in chat rooms. Behind every success story though lie a hundred traumatic ones.

And when Lindsay Pereira, male, becomes HotBabEE, female, there's more than just a blurring of identities happening.

Here's a thought: Thanks to the intrinsic anonymity it promotes as a medium, chances are anyone who logs on to the Internet does so at the risk of an identity change almost at once!

The switch to HotBabEE splits my identity into two: one real, the other virtual. Students of communication maintain that you can't be the same person in both worlds simply because the virtual one takes away some basic mechanisms of your personality. Facial expressions, body language and tone give way to chat abbreviations and a set of emoticons. The result: a personality change without your knowing it.

What you do -- consciously or unconsciously -- is replace your real persona for an illusory one, with the degree of manipulation differing from individual to individual. Some tweak IDs to reflect changes they'd like (slim guy calling himself HotHunk); others use it for purely escapist purposes (Sudhir from Assam logging on as UKmodel); still others opt for complete fabrication to compensate for a disappointing reality.

What happens when young, naïve Naina runs into friendly, funny Karthik at a public chat room? Nothing. Not until everyone else finds out later that Karthik is actually a 55-year-old paedophile. What happens when Abhiman Gupta falls head over heels in love with Krutika from Malaysia? Again, nothing. Until he finally meets her and finds a 42-year-old with two kids.

WildXAngel documents stories like these, sent in by real victims from around the world. 'If you're looking for love on the Internet, you'd better look here first' reads the home page banner, and with good reason. You can find out about protection online or scroll through scary stories about all kids of addicts and Internet related crimes.

So much for love in the time of broadband.

Quick fact: None of us are quite the same online as we are in real life. Quiet folk become raving lunatics; raving lunatics discuss quantum physics. There are no walls here. Good news for introverts; better still for conmen and serial killers. This also explains why identity fraud is one of the fastest-growing crimes today.

In fact, some places actually insist on a change of identity. Take MUDs and MOOs -- multi-user dungeons and multi-user environments - that require participants to become characters with fictionalised attributes.

It's not all bad news though. Anonymity reduces discrimination, thanks to our inability to make too many assumptions about netizens. It has yet to eliminate stereotypes though, if the private messages I received within eight seconds of logging on are anything to go by.

The virtual centre for media studies in the UK has a huge body of interesting theories, by academicians, about representation in cyberspace and the break from identities it involves. Some maintain that even something as seemingly innocuous as setting up a Web page involves adapting public domain information to fashion personal identities. Apart from Web sites then, even their creators are in the midst of a construction of sorts.

Like everything else, then, the pros come with cons. Pro: the Internet is probably the most autonomous method of communication ever invented, letting you be free like nothing else. Con: Anonymity is often a cloak for all things malevolent and anti-social. Pick your side.

And yes, the next time you decide to chat up HotBabEE, don't. I'm not interested.

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