Beware of wanna-be@fake.com

You pop on to your America Online account, check your e-mail and find a note from “Keanuu.” The message details how he loves motorcycles, misses River Phoenix and enjoys playing bass in a band called Dogstar.

You pull up Keanuu’s on-line biography--something every AOL member fills out when signing up with the service--and the name listed is KReeves. Even the birthday shown--Sept. 2, 1964--matches the actor’s. So it’s got to be legitimate, right?

Wrong. Whether it’s someone who poses as a celebrity or who deliberately spreads false rumors, fraud is rampant in cyberspace. And neither stars nor the public may be able to do anything about it.

On-line information is usually reliable, experienced computer users say. But those scrolling through on-line systems should learn to be wary of what they read.

“There are always a zillion rumors floating around,” said a subscriber to several newsgroups who goes by the computer handle “SDL3966.”

“The rumors always go in cycles. Every few months, you’ll see a flurry of ‘Omigod, did you hear that one about X?’ The older ‘Netters will roll their eyes and say, ‘Yes, I’ve heard that one 10 times. It’s not true.’ ”

Commercial services like America Online, CompuServe and the Well have released a host of wide-eyed novices to the electronic realm. For this new wave of curious explorers, technology has become an authority figure that isn’t questioned.

“You’re looking at a computer screen and you forget that you’re actually just dealing with other people, not some omnipotent being,” said J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the TV show “Babylon 5,” who has been on-line since 1984. “You’re stuck in a room on the Internet with thousands of people you don’t know. One or two of them are bound to be jerks.”

While anonymity plays a large part in the medium’s appeal--on-line, you can be anyone, with any age and background--some ‘Netters enjoy fooling others by posing as celebrities. On Prodigy, for example, two people claim to be Trent Reznor, leader of the industrial-rock band Nine Inch Nails. On America Online, three subscribers are posing as U2 singer Bono and four as Keanu Reeves.

The Times sent e-mail notes to the four Reeves wanna-bes, asking, “Are you the Keanu Reeves, star of the film ‘Speed’?” Three responded with a yes. One using the handle “Keanuu” wrote back that he “picked up on lotsa chicks this way.”

For the record, the real Reeves has never gone on-line. In a statement, the actor said he is “appalled” and will “explore any and all legal action” to halt this misrepresentation. But it’s a gray area.

“If the person is being malicious and the celebrity feels like his or her image is being damaged, then you might have a case,” said Lance Rose, a Montclair, N.J., lawyer who specializes in high-tech and information law. “You could argue that it’s a defamation of sorts, that it’s defamation in front of a huge audience that’s growing each day.”

But most lawyers say Reeves could be a plaintiff without a cause. For a celebrity to pursue a civil lawsuit, the impostor must use the misrepresentation to trick others out of money or something else of value.

“If someone shows up on-line and pretends to be Keanu Reeves and doesn’t try to sell you Florida swampland, there is not a lot you can do about it,” said Mike Godwin, staff counselor for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public interest civil liberties organization based in Washington. “It’s illegal to pose as a policeman. It’s not against the law to pretend to be a movie star.”

Financial gain and mental illness are two reasons people pose as celebrities in the real world, said Park Elliott Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who testified at the trials of would-be assassin John Hinckley and the obsessed fan who killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer.

“Our culture places a premium on someone who is in close proximity to a celebrity,” Dietz said. “The on-line arena makes it so simple because it’s the best disguise of all.”

And it’s impossible to police the Internet, said attorney Jill Windwer, vice president of the Law Journal Seminars-Press in New York.

“The law hasn’t caught up to the technology yet,” she said. “When someone does something wrong, who is held accountable? Right now, that’s an unanswerable question.”

America Online places the responsibility with its subscribers, said AOL spokeswoman Pam McGraw.

“They agree not to submit or display any inaccurate information,” she said. “If a falsehood is brought to our attention, then we’ll try to deal with it.

“But we’ve got more than a million subscribers now. It’s impossible for us to track every user. It’s up to people on the service to police themselves.”