By Mark O’Neill
No, the title of this article is not the way it sounds. I’m not advocating anything illegal. I’m not offering any fake passports or dodgy driving licenses. But instead, when you’re filling in another one of those endless web forms asking for your contact information, instead of giving them your actual details, how about giving them some fake information instead?
It just occurred to me the other night when filling out another web registration form, that there is too much information about me floating out there in cyberspace. With all the social networks that I take part in, people can easily (with a bit of legwork) find out everything there is to know about me to steal my identity. So I started to take down all my compromising information. I started removing things like photographs, names, dates, places and my date of birth for example. Lots of people put their date of birth into online registration forms (probably without thinking about it too much) but your date of birth is one of the first things used to verify your identity in places like a bank!
So why not start using the Fake Name Generator from now on? Just drag it up into your Bookmarks Toolbar and next time a website wants you to register yourself, hit that Fake Name Generator button and use a fake identity to register. The FNG gives you a fake name, address, email (which can be used to temporarily receive emails), maiden name, birth date, phone number, even a fake credit card number for when you’re downloading a free piece of software but the software company wants your credit card details anyway (hmmm…..)
You can even specify what country and nationality you want your details to be from. Fancy being French? Oh Monsieur! Or German? Kein Problem Mein Frau!
I would never ever condone the site being used for anything illegal, but for protecting your identity against online ID thieves, it’s absolutely perfect. On Saturday I was Doris, on Sunday I was Lipot and yesterday I was Harald. Who will I be today?
Tags: generator, identity, registration