For the past three weeks or so, I've been getting instant messages from "Hilary Duff." For those of you who might not know - a group which once included myself - Miss Duff is a 19-year-old pop starlet who rose to fame with a series called "Lizzie McGuire" on the Disney Channel. She's had several hit albums, none of which I've ever heard. Heck, I don't know if I even get the Disney Channel. As I explained to "Hilary," she's a little out of our PC Magazine demographic.

"Oh yeah?" said her publicist when I called. "Have you seen her cover of Maxim?"

Good publicist.

Full story after the jump. Photo to the left of Hilary with her Blackberry 8800 from Popsugar.

"Hilary" first IMed me as part of a flood of 14-year-olds bombarding my account when my IM address accidentally got posted online as part of a video review of the Sidekick 3. After that mess, I discovered how bad some teenagers' spelling skills are, and how little they think you actually have to work during working hours.

But she popped up again a few weeks ago. Apparently I was on her buddy list. If "studdmuffinxx928" is even a "her."

"H": hellooo?
S: yes?
"H": who is this?
S: you're the one IMing me from nowhere. who is THIS and why are you IMing me?
"H": This is Hilary...your sn was on my buddy list.
S: Hilary whom?
"H": Hilary Duff
(a few lines snipped for length)
"H": I use to have a sidekick...I own a blackbery now
S: That's funny. My brother is a Hollywood actor and just a few months ago he said all of his friends were ditching Sidekicks for Blackberries ... what model do you have?
"H": 8700g
"H": this is Hilary Duff...you don't know who I am?

This was the point when, Duff's publicist said, I should have gotten really suspicious. Apparently the actual Hilary Duff never pulls that hoary old "don't you know who I am?" line. But she does in fact have a Blackberry and, if you read this interview, she seems a bit of a geek.

"Hilary" kept IMing me every few days, mostly about Blackberries. Apparently, she gave her 8700g to her sister Haylie and wanted to know whether to get an 8800 or to wait for the T-Mobile version of the Curve. This is not altogether implausible. I know 19-year-old girls who are really into their cell phones. Also, as you saw in the Popsugar photo, the real Hilary does in fact now own a Blackberry 8800. On the other hand, to repeatedly IM a random spiky-haired hack about aforementioned phones is probably something that the actual Hilary Duff doesn't have time for.

I asked her to prove who she was, and of course, she wouldn't. She said she didn't have to prove anything to me. That's when I got the idea of calling her publicist. But first, "Hilary" IMed me, she said, on the way to her Pilates class to tell me a funny story:

"H": haha I went down to Malibu with a ton of friends and one of them lives on the beach so we went to her house and had a huge party and we buried a papparatzi :]

Right. I so bet you did. Or maybe you just read celebrity blogs.

Inside the Impostor

Okay, okay, let's imagine for a moment that someone decides they need to pretend to be a celebrity to get cell phone advice from PC Magazine. Why choose such a demographically inappropriate celebrity? I mean, heck, in my fantasy world of giving tech advice to twentysomething pop starlets, I'd probably answer IMs from Avril Lavigne and Lily Allen first. Though they're in Canada and the UK, so I don't know if I'd be able to help them with their cell phone problems. If you're out there, though, girls, give it a try.

So: sweet kid, I'm sure. Just maybe a little confused?

Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, told me that "Hilary" could be a teenage girl who's also impersonating Hilary Duff elsewhere on the Internet - maybe in more Duff-appropriate locations. "One speculation would be that this writer has Hilary Duff as a model, a hero, maybe an alter ego, and that's carried over into pseudonym online," he said.

Pretending to be a celebrity also has a real thrill to it, because you could be found out, Farley said. "It's more thrilling to adopt a well-known name like Hilary Duff as your persona. Imagine what real people like Hilary Duff have to do to counter it?"

You have to do a lot, apparently; according to Hilary's PR firm, they deal with fake Duffs all the time, especially on MySpace.

The game was finally up when I talked to the real Hilary's happily bubbly publicist, who left a message on my answering machine:

"Hi, this is [Duff's publicist] calling. I just want to tell you that the person who has been IMing you is NOT Hilary Duff. I repeat, she is NOT Hilary Duff."

Whoops.

Wonder who was IMing me, after all?