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[ Portions of this article have been rewritten based on reader input. ]

It starts with a simple, innocent-sounding post. Someone is available to babysit. "I've heard that you are great," states a response. "I plan to hire you on Friday so my husband and I can go out," follows another. "I hired her and she was great," exclaims an additional accolade. And then, "Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate the great response." Taken nearly word-for-word from a recent thread in the DCUM nanny forums, this is an example of a sock puppet in action. The entire exchange was composed by a single individual hoping to drum up business.

In 1993, the World Wide Web — what many people have wrongly come to consider synonymous with "The Internet" — was launched. That same year, The New Yorker published a cartoon by Peter Steiner showing two dogs sitting in front of a computer with the caption, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". According to Wikipedia, Steiner didn't attach a "profound" meaning to the cartoon. Nevertheless, he managed to capture an essential truth of the online age and the underlying message — intended or not — is one of which we frequently need to remind ourselves. As a number of anecdotes from my experience with the "nanny ads" on DCUM illustrate, this is especially the case when using the Internet as a means of finding a nanny or other childcare professional.