Last month's terrorist attacks put a crack in a foundation of Internet culture: the right to remain anonymous.
The trend to make e-mail and other online technologies traceable to an individual comes as investigators track the online communications of Islamist militants who hijacked fuel-laden jets and slammed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last month.
The FBI is currently combing through computers supposedly used by the hijackers, searching for clues about alleged terrorist cells using the Internet to conduct their deadly business. They have already arrested a San Diego, California, man identified as Omer Bakarbashat, 26, who allegedly helped some of the accused hijackers hone their Internet skills.
Currently, anyone is free to create an infinite number of e-mail addresses and other online identities, called "screen names." That makes it possible to pile fake digital personas upon fake personas, creating a digital fog that can stymie lawmen trying to track down someone sending threatening e-mails or plotting illegal acts online.
"It can get very Byzantine," said a San Francisco-based US computer investigator who asked that his name not be used. "You have to trace e-mail addresses to other addresses to other addresses. It's pretty daunting."
Over the weekend, Canada's Zero Knowledge, which publishes a popular anonymous e-mail forwarding technology, shuttered its system in the face of the terrorist attacks.
Company spokesman Dov Smith said the decision, which occurred after the Sept. 11 attacks, wasn't prompted at first by them.
"But I think people are losing their appetite for this kind of technology now," he said. "So it was a good move to make."
AOL, the world's largest online subscription service, said it was modifying its user agreements to begin installing "cookies" and "Web beacons" on their customers' computers. These small pieces of software can track an individual users on the AOL service. The technology benefits advertisers, collecting demographic data on those exposed to online ads, but it also creates a digital trail that can be followed by law enforcement.
The company, part of the giant AOL-Time Warner media conglomerate, promises it would not reveal individual user profiles to marketers. However, that doesn't exempt those digital fingerprints from being turned over to lawmen. AOL confirmed in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks that it complied with subpoenas from the FBI seeking information on its users.
Walter Mossberg, the influential Wall Street Journal technology columnist, has called for Internet service providers to "re-examine the juvenile practice of allowing customers to hide behind multiple screen names.
"We don't go around wearing masks in the real world," he said.
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