Internet Identity: Truth or Dare?

Should I use my real identity when communicating on the internet, or should I have a separate online identity? That is the question I have been thinking about as I watch my internet footprint grow with every blog entry, blog comment, forum post, mailing list reply, and IRC chat message. (FYI - IRC chat messages are often logged and posted online.)

I do not have a reason to keep my privacy now, but who knows what the future holds? I may have new enemies in the future that I don't want to know personal details about me. Once data is on the internet, it stays on the internet. It is usually impossible to erase your writing from the public domain.

I can only think of two options:

1. I can continue to use my real identity, but I must always keep in mind that what I write may be used against me in the future. This can be in the form of a job opportunity, an evil stalker, a political campaign, a business deal, or a lawsuit.

2. Create a new nickname that serves as my online identity. I must be careful to never refer to the real identity from this one, and vice-versa. This may provide me with some more freedom of speech, but there is a possibility that my two identities will be linked. In fact, it would not be very hard for a motivated person to accomplish.

Both options have large downsides. Is this just something that we must accept with online communication? Are there any other options that I have missed?

Comments

  1. Anonymous5/11/2007 4:53 AM

    Would you want to work for a company that takes random web findings that seriously?

    Evil stalkers are luckily rare, and on top of that can use social engineering to find things out about you.

    Sure, if you are running for the president, they will Google you mercilessly.

    If you do not claim your name, who will? It's easy to manifacture false 'you' in order to plant the dirt that was not there. Only the real you is likely to speak for you.

    Over 15 online with my real name, and not a moment of regret or one unwelcome phone call. Either I'm lucky or it is really not that bad out there. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5/11/2007 4:55 AM

    I've thought about this myself. I think the former option is definitely more responsible, intelligent, and generally, the right thing to do. Just be responsible with what you say as you'd in real life. Obviously, if more people would do that, others would be more able to enjoy using the internet.
    I like to think of it like DRM. You can try to protect you're identity (think digital content) as much as you want, but if someone is determined enough, they will inevitably find you out, so this route is in the end, worthless.

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  3. Anonymous5/11/2007 5:04 AM

    Over 15 years, I meant. And most of them with the phone number, too.

    Heh, now the world knows I occasionally make typos, unlike everyone else. =)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rusty5/11/2007 5:08 AM

    As an observation, I'm pretty sure you can dig up statements you've made already, that are on the Internet, that you believed were true at the time you made them, but you know now that are not true. Does this mean that you were lying at the time? Does it mean that you will always be wrong? No, it means that you were not afraid to be outspoken about your knowledge at the time, and that you are willing accept that you may be wrong, and are willing to learn.

    There are some people who are willing to hold opinions you have held at one time against you, no matter what. In my opinion the fact that they will show themselves in the future, perhaps by denying a job application, or the like, is probably a really good indication that I wouldn't want to work with them or for them anyway. But that's just my opinion, at this time.

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  5. Anonymous5/11/2007 5:45 AM

    Tristan, to be fair, you are a relative nobody in the scope of the internet. I am guessing anything you post under planet ubuntu would be perfectly acceptable to any potential employer. There are a ton of things in your life to worry about, this isn't one.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Arvind Narayanan5/11/2007 6:00 AM

    "but there is a possibility that my two identities will be linked. In fact, it would not be very hard for a motivated person to accomplish."

    I do academic research on this sort of thing. If you'll take my word for it, this sort of technology will be routinely automated in a few years.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Joseph Price5/11/2007 7:23 AM

    I say if you don't want someone to hear what you have to say then don't say it.

    There are no secrets in this world anymore :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous5/11/2007 9:36 AM

    "Evil stalkers are luckily rare..."

    No, they aren't rare anymore. In past 2 years, I've realized the rapid growth of evil minded people on the WWW. If you want to face the truth, go ahead and spend sometime in IRC channels, chat rooms, etc.

    Or, just search for wrong keywords in Google Trends and you'll be surprised to see the statistics.

    People, who spend hours in IRC channels and chat rooms, are aware of these type of problems.


    @Tristan: The sad thing is that you can't hide your identity once it's been leaked on the Net. So, now you'll have to follow your point #1.

    To stay hidden on the net, one must be highly careful since the start. I know a few popular people who never leaked even their first name on the net and their blogs are under Alexa 5,000.

    Leaking real identity *can* become dangerous for you. No one had ever expected that people like Robert Scoble of Scobleizer and Cathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users shall have to face nightmares because of some evil stalker and it all happened online.

    Best of luck!
    - Avi

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous5/11/2007 12:06 PM

    beliefs and opinions change, they are not static. however, if at every moment you are mindful that all your family, friends, and strangers you have yet to meet will be able to judge you on the basis of comments that might not truly reflect your current understanding, then you will act to limit the range of ideas that you do comment about.

    that is why you can't ever be yourself online; you will have to self-censor in such a way that you never truly express yourself the way you would to, say, a close friend.

    so the comment that was made suggesting to go ahead and claim your name but be "responsible with what you say as you'd be in real life" is misguided; because you will never end up saying the same things as you would in real life.

    if people's online persona are just these collection of politically correct comments then what kind of online community will we be building?

    the confusion is to combine your professional persona with your personal identities. your identity as a social commentator, political pundit, or music lover don't have to be connected with your professional or open-source identity.

    so i say don't claim your name unless its for your professional interests and choose an obviously concocted pseudonym for everything else. invent an identity that suits the context.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous5/11/2007 2:15 PM

    #1 for sure!

    Keeping track of accounts and identities online is enough trouble without having to recall which alias and persona you've used in a certain conversation.

    I realized myself (just before I bought a .name domain :) that if I didn't want something attributed to me online, I also wouldn't want to say it in person. So, I opted to resolve my own idiosyncrasies, rather than maintain a separation of online identities to hide them.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous5/11/2007 3:51 PM

    paul kishimoto said "if I didn't want something attributed to me online, I also wouldn't want to say it in person."

    paul is essentially saying something like: "everything i say online i would also say in person".

    that is not the point. i would be surprised if someone disagreed with that statement.

    what is being debated is the other way round.

    there are many things i would say in confidence to friends but do not want to say online and have preserved for eternity.

    the only advantage to "claiming" your public identity is if you use it to promote yourself; whether that is your professional interests or your personal life, hobbies, etc.

    but beyond that, who cares?

    does it really matter what someone's name is when you correspond with them on the internet? isn't it their ideas and what they have to say, rather than who they claim they are, that counts?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous5/11/2007 5:25 PM

    Avinash: I spend those 15 years on IRC. Being a female on IRC, at that. I had one stalker, and he did that on IRC only and never paid any attention on the off-IRC me.

    There are idiots everywhere, but I still think actual stalkers, even online ones, are quite rare.

    I did not understand your reference to Google Trends. I'm not at all surprised to see search for 'stalker' growing in volume recently... for reasons like the computer game. :) But you probably meant something else?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous5/11/2007 7:09 PM

    First of all, you seem to have to register into hundreds of web sites and services every year to be able to do things. I do. But, no services have the option "DESTROY MY ACCOUNT". That means I am leaving behind huge amount of all sorts of accounts. In case someone (by luck or any other mean) gained control of them, it would annoy or even hurt me if I was linked into some wrongdoing. The probability for that to happen raises by time and accounts created, especially when you are like me extremely active and always testing all sorts of things.

    Second, especially "amateurish" services such as open source mailing lists seem to have some sort of archiving mania. It's nice to be able to find, but generally the scope is such that any search engine finds everything.. It's broad, horribly visible. Oh, I'm just waiting for to be able to laugh when someone sues mail-archive.com for real for the first time. That'll serve them right.

    Yeah, using secondary interweb identities is good. I'm doing it constantly and spamming the blog comments using different nicknames and such.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous5/12/2007 4:49 AM

    I use my real name, and have for a number of years now. What do I do online that I wouldn't want an employer to know? If you just start Googling, you'll find out that I have a mixed bag but reasonably sane blog and contribute to open-source projects, for the most part. Lynoure's "random web findings" comment also stands. Frankly I think my web presence helps me rather than hurts me. The only one that could potentially be an issue is the "evil stalker", and my actual address would take more effort to find than an e-mail or IRC nice, and I'm not terribly concerned anyway. Do what you're comfortable with, but that's the route I've gone.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous5/12/2007 11:32 PM

    As with many things, it depends how you plan to handle legacy (in this case, what you've posted on the 'net existing "forever"). If you're comfortable maintaining multiple identities, then do that. If you like things simpler, then your first stated option is likely more sane.

    Personally, "anything you say can and will be used against you" seems a fair assessment (if not a bit bleak). In this day, we are responsible for the ramifications of any utterances on the 'net.

    --Daniel T Chen (crimsun at ubuntu)

    ReplyDelete

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