Hiding behind your screen name

[cornfed]

Say, maybe you're not really Curt Bowen after all... but a JT Barker sockpuppet! This sounds a lot like a thread he started on the deco stop a while back.

How would we know... hmmmmm?

We'll just have to wait and see if he starts talking about "real" divers.

 

[Kim]

I do use my real name as I have nothing to hide there. I understand though what people are saying about personal security. Where I live however is so far out of the way that I can't possibly think that anyone could find it - let alone try - why? I don't have a lot to steal and anyway Japan is a very safe place. I don't give out my address/telephone number/personal email address (I use a Hotmail account for a lot of 'public' stuff). It doesn't bother me that others choose to be different - in fact several of the names on the board just make me laugh. I often think it can be quite telling what someone chooses for their 'alter-ego' - I bet Freud would have had a field day!
I used to live in Amsterdam and that is probably a lot more like America in terms of security - and crazies. There I was an awful lot more careful about my name - it's one of the main reasons I moved here. Here I don't have to worry constantly about my two, still very young, daughters. It's nice to have peace of mind - if hiding your name allows you to keep more of it - that's fine by me! There's no real way to know who I'm talking to on SB - but I can measure up what they say with what I already know and it soon becomes quite clear who is worth listening to and who isn't. For all the people here who know so much more than me it must be so much easier to weed out the BS - and the BS**ters. All in all - a bit like watching someone get ready for a dive!

 

[wedivebc]

I don't post my full name so that I avoid emails from widows of Nigerian diplomats trying to offer me huge sums of money by tranferring said money to my bank account....
My anonymity is to hide from the spam merchants not from fellow divers.
Maybe I'm internet paranoid but I am not comfortable with the amount of my personal information already out in cyberspace.

cheers,

 

[s7595]

curt
when was the last time you spoke to a police offcer about ID theft
.the world we live in makes it so easy to ruin a persons credit rateing ,and basicly steal there life. a freind had it happen ,now when he applys for anything he has to have a copy o fthe police report ,new credit report . so I chose to guard my ID, if I asked to go diveing with a sb menber then I would give info

 

[glbirch]

Most of the time, wackos target women.

Hey, I resent that remark. I'm not that particular.

If I used a "name" how would you know it was my real one? There are a lot of real issues these days regarding identity theft, spamming, etc, so I can't really blame people who dont' post their whole name, especially with a photo attached. (Curt, noticed you don't have a photo posted either?) Doesn't take long IMO to figure out who's full of s**t and who knows what they're talking about.

 

[uwhooligan]

I had an experience with another forum a few years ago which made me a bit warier. Admittedly I was dabbling in an area where you were likely to find more wackos but was a lesson learned none the less. While flogging underground videos on some fringe forums (on the side, it wasnt my primary reason for being there) I encountered a gentleman who said he was from a former soviet bloc country and begged me to give him a reduced rate due to his personal economic conditions/ exchange rate blah blah blah. I was about to go for it until he gave me a German address, at which time I balked. Over a period of months he decided to torment me with collect phone calls at bizarre times. Now the phone company and police arent too concerned with random anonymous phone calls placed from public phone booths in germany but it was a PITA. I gather he tracked me down by just using net tools and researching previous posts I had made but in the end it was just a case of waiting it out a while until I completed a move and changed numbers with a different name spelling on the listing.
As for my real name, anyone who PM's me will get it on my reply unless they gave me reason to choose not too. If I was an entity like a diveshop/owner/charter/instructor/magazine publisher Id be more inclined to hold it out front but I'm just another diver so who really cares. In the end those who know me know me and those who dont, just take my ID for all it is, a name I happened to think of at the time of registering, no more no less...

 

[ScubaTexan]

What are you talking about?? This IS my real name....

 

[lamont]

I use my real first name. I used to use pseudonyms back on BBS's in the late 80s. Gradually I just migrated to saying what I had to say with my real name attatched.

i don't have too much fear of the privacy implications. There's far easier ways to mess with people. I also don't have much fear of how my words are going to make me look -- I'm sure that 10 or so years from now I'll be mortally embarrassed by reading something I posted here recently.

I find a lot of the pseudonyms used here pretty creative, though, and think they give a certain amount of color to the place...

 

[partridge]

Believe it or not this the first and only internet thing I am a member of. When I was asked to give a name I just gave my first name and last initial. I thought the whole name would be too long.

I really want to change it to "partridge", which is my last name. It is easier to remember. But I remember someone registered again with another name and got slammed. So I guess I'll just keep it.

 

[Ted S]

Paul P you are now partridge, enjoy.