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Viliam_Bur comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong
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What threat do you want to protect against? If you fear the NSA, they have probably have no trouble linking your real name to your alias.
They know where the person with your real name lives and they know what web addresses get browsed from that location.
I could not do that. I study in university under my real name and my identity as a university student is linked to my public identity. The link is strong enough that a journalist who didn't contact me via a social network called my university to get in touch with me.
On LessWrong I write under my firstname plus the first two letters of my lastname. That means that anyone who recognises my identity from somewhere else can recognize me but if someone Google's for me he can't find me easily.
I have no trouble having to stand up for write I write on Lesswrong to people I meet in real life but having a discussion with one of my aunts about it wouldn't be fun, so I don't make it too easy. I also wouldn't want the writing to be quoted out of context in other places. I would survive it but given the low level of filtering on what I write on LW it would be annoying.
As far as self censoring goes I feel safe to say one of my aunts given that I have multiple of them. Anybody reading couldn't reduce who I mean. Whenever else I write something about someone I know I think twice whether someone could identify the person and if so I wouldn't write it publicly under this identity. Asking about relationship advice and flashing out specific a problem would be a no-go for me because it might make details public that the other person didn't want to have public. Everything I say in that regard is supposed to be general enough that no harm will come from it to other people I know personally.
A conservative employer, less skilled than NSA.
For example I want to write blogs against religion or against some political party, and yet not be at a disadvantage when applying for a job in a company where the boss suports them. Also to avoid conflicts with colleagues.
Good point. In such case I would put the university in the same category as an employer. Generally, all institutions that have power over me at some point of my life.
This. The face one presents to one's peers is justifiably different from the face one presents to amoral, potentially dangerous organizations. Probably the first thing that, say, a job interviewer will do with a potential candidate is Google their name. Unless the interviewer is exceptionally open minded, it is critical to your livelihood that they not find the Harry Potter erotica you wrote when you were fifteen.
I have both a handle and a legal name. The handle is as much "me" as the legal one (more so, in some ways). I don't hesitate to give out my real name to people I know online, but I won't give my handle out to any organizational representative. I fear the bureaucracy more than random Internet kooks. It's not about evading the NSA; it's about keeping personal and professional life safely separated.
It's like when I lock my doors, a skilled thief would get inside anyway. But it's good to protect myself against the 99% of unskilled thieves (people who could become thieves when given a tempting opportunity). Similarly, it would be good to be protected against random people who merely type my name into google, look at the first three pages of results, open the first five linked articles, and that's it.
It's already rather late for me, but this is probably an advice I will give my children.
Technically, I could start using a new identity for controversial things today, and use my real name only for professional topics. But I am already almost 40. Even if after 10 years most of stuff written using my real name would get away from google top search results, it probably wouldn't make a big difference. And seems to me that these days link rot is slower than it used to be. Also, I wouldn't know what to do with my old unprofessional blog articles: deleting them would be painful; moving them to the new identity would expose me; keeping them defeats the purpose. -- I wish I could send this message back in time to my teenage self. Who would probably choose a completely stupid nickname.