Last month, online friends of 19-year old leukemia patient "Kaycee Nicole" were crushed to discover that the plucky teenager they'd been sending Beanie Babies and Amazon gift certificates to for a year was actually a healthy woman named Debbie Swenson. Swenson wasn't asking for donations, but her fictional accounts of a bout with cancer earned "Kaycee" hundreds of devoted fans around the world. The Kaycee Hoax, as it's now known, confirmed the need for suspicion on the Web, but it also points to more general questions. Is there room on the Web for pleas from people who actually need help?

Keith Dawson, founding author of the 6-year-old newsletter Tasty Bits from the Technology Front, thinks so. He's just launched a not-for-profit corporation called Friend Indeed, which aims "to collect and distribute donations that enable the lives of worthy people."

"I have some reputation capital banked," says Dawson, whose weblog has earned several honors, including, most recently, a listing in Forbes' "Best of the Web 2000" feature. "This is the best way to spend it." The Friend Indeed program is meant to ensure that well-meaning Netizens don't get scammed again, Dawson writes in an e-mail that is currently circulating.

"Recently the Kaycee Nicole hoax ratcheted up the level of skepticism that Netizens will bring to any sad tale they read online. Read on with skepticism if you must, but please take my word that the story is true and the need is urgent."

However noble his intentions, Dawson may not succeed in proving the Net skeptics wrong. Even Dawson -- whose nonprofit promises to vet needy cases to ensure their veracity and need -- could have done a little more homework.

The Friend Indeed program launched with the case of Marcia Blake. According to Dawson's e-mailed plea for help and Blake's own account, a doctor botched Blake's January 2000 hip surgery in San Diego, and before a second operation could fix the problem, Blake's Kaiser Permanente insurance ran out. After going through Kaiser's complaint department and to California's HMO regulators, both of whom rejected her claims, she is now back home in Santa Fe, N.M., without insurance and without the ability to pay for surgery, which would cost about $50,000. Because Blake has been "uninsured and uninsurable" since she left California on Aug. 31, as she writes in her online plea, every day that she goes without surgery brings her closer to being unable to walk, permanently.

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On April 4, Blake turned to the Net for help. She decided to go "outside the system," posting her story in an online forum and e-mailing everyone she knew. Dawson was on the list. She'd been one of his "irregulars" -- people who occasionally tip him off to technology news -- and since he'd known Blake for about three years, the plea carried credence. She seemed like the perfect first candidate.

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