The freedom of avatar-based communication to manipulate how one presents oneself can induce both liberating and destructive consequences for the individual actor and other social interactants. Anonymity refers to the degree to which a communicator perceives an individual as unknown or unspecified. Anonymity is a continuous construct. It is a social construct and requires interpersonal context and awareness. The previous interactions with an actor also affect how anonymous someone is. Misrepresentation refers to the creation of false and misleading impressions about one’s identity. This may occur to make one more desirable than one really is. Identity replacement refers to the act of substituting another identity for one’s own. This new identity can be of someone else or completely fictional. Computer-mediated context makes it easy for a person to pretend to be someone else. Impostering refers to replacing physical world identities with virtual, avatar-based identities that do not look like them. The self-perception theory states that people infer their own attitudes from observing themselves as if from third-person perspective. One’s perceived identity can change how an individual behaves. People start to behave in ways that are consistent with the characteristics of their manipulated identities. The deindividuation theory states that when individuals lose their sense of individual identity, they are less likely to abide by social norms. Deindividuation produces a general disinhibition of previous inhibited behaviour. The social identity model of deindividuation states that the self should be defined at various different levels including the categorical self as well as the personal self (e.g. a nurse disguise makes people less aggressive; not necessarily non-normative behaviour). The context of communication (1), the degree to which the source is perceived as anonymous (2), the receiver’s desire to identify the source (3) and the...