Originally published at: How to create a good pseudonymous persona | Boing Boing
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This could never be abused…
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We did this for one of my daughters, many years ago. Many people in her life only know her by that other name.
Definitely a good move for women to protect their identities on social media.
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I think it can also be used in more nefarious ways, though.
And also, it fucking sucks that women have to think about protecting their identity.
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This could not have been a more timely post, thank you for this.
I am in the middle of planning a massive heist on a certain Las Vegas venue and was stuck on how to cover my tracks.
My ten comrades-in-arms will also be following your wonderful advice.
Thank you, my friend.
(check is in post)
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But with which name on it?
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I was going to use my maiden name of Clorge Gooney.
Do you think that unwise?
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If you lived in Philly - and if you worked at the Airport- that wouldn’t have flown. There’s no such Street in Center City. They have tree names. Or all of Philly.
That’s not an airport email - and that telephone exchange isn’t used at the Airport.
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I don’t, but I can imagine someone who might.
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Ah, good point.
I shall stick with my original pseudonym of ‘Annie Dozian’.
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I remember when The Brothers Chaps did this.
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But, but… I’m already a pseudonymous persona. Layers of them, even. There’s no real me to be found.
I suspect all the entities churning out fake identities to man their bot social media sock puppets already have systems set up to do this, though (and probably at scale, too). The abusive version got here first.
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I know several people who constantly use variations of their first and last names for both work and online activities.
Nothing as dramatic as a Klingon name - but when you search their true name online nothing appears.
It’s like the real person has never existed.
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So you mean a random given name and surname that are both common as dirt and thoroughly ungoogleable but not quite as on the nose as John Smith?
Hmm.
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oddly enough, all of my pseudonymous personas are good, and all of my anonymous personas are chaotic neutral. it wasn’t so much a plan, it just worked out that way
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I did this pretty regularly for a while, both for sneaky purposes and also to protect myself. I was pretty involved in some forms of actism where I could reasonably foresee nefarious people working backwards from faces at protests through social networks to identify people. Creating cutouts for ways I could interact online made it vastly more difficult for people to use others to find me or use me to find others.
In my experience, this is a fine way to create a decent pseudonym, but not a good one. If you actually expect scrutiny, you probably don’t want to pick a random city. Too many things mark out regional knowledge to fake a city you aren’t familiar with.
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I am tempted to shout out that you are Peter Sellers and that I claim my £5 - but Peter Sellers is dead.
Allegedly.
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