Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

When I got on the intertubes, oh-so-many years ago - the rules were simple: the ONLY piece of information you could freely give on public forums, or IRC, was your nick. Now, the only piece of information you are supposed to withhold is your credit card number.<p>I&#x27;ll say this about the new ways: I&#x27;m extremely glad that I didn&#x27;t have my teenage years documented and archived. Dodged that bullet!

I use my real name everywhere online. The reasons why are pretty straightforward:<p>1. It reminds me to be civil and think before I post.<p>2. It makes it easier for other people reach out to me based on things I&#x27;ve posted (I have a fairly unique name).<p>Pseudonyms are relatively easy to &#x27;decode&#x27;. If I wrote something particularly dumb, offensive, or stupid, and someone wanted to pin that on me, I&#x27;m sure they could given enough time and effort.

I am prejudiced against people who use their real names when the website allows them to use a nickname: I automatically assume they will be uninteresting, their opinions sheepish and will always avoid confrontation or controversial ideas. I feel like they are always talking in the presence of their mother.

I used my real name until 1997, when I was posting questions on newsgroups. When dejanews.com came out, I realized that everything I wrote was forever, and since then I&#x27;ve never used my real name, except on linkedin and Facebook. But both of those use one-off email addresses. I really don&#x27;t think having a permanent internet profile is necessary and is likely more detrimental than beneficial.<p>I know I&#x27;m not anonymous, and I&#x27;m sure the NSA can figure out exactly what all my posts are, but at least it makes it hard for regular companies to track me.

I use my real name, and I quite frankly do not care if I get passed up for a job or something like that because of something I said online. I&#x27;m pretty sure any employer I would actually want to work for wouldn&#x27;t care about me ranting about the NSA or something (might even get me a job, who knows). That being said, I do not say anything online that I wouldn&#x27;t in real life (except perhaps on IRC channels where I use a nick) and it&#x27;s seemed to work out ok so far.

So much awesome cluelessness in the replies on that post. &quot;It&#x27;s definitely safe to use your real name,&quot; says WHAMM (White Heterosexual Able-bodied Middle-class Male) #1 confidently. &quot;Nobody ever suffers from real-world social and legal consequences as a result of what they do online. No gay teenager from a small town has ever been bashed to death by homophobes after he got outed for his online activities. No woman on the run from an abusive husband ever got tracked down and &#x27;punished&#x27; as a result of profile details on the internet. No activist fighting an oppressive regime ever got &#x27;disappeared&#x27; after the authorities tracked them down using a web forum profile. It&#x27;s all perfectly safe. Don&#x27;t inconvenience us!&quot;

This seems pretty obvious to me. When you are working to build a positive reputation online you use your real name. When you are taking part in things you don&#x27;t want associated with your reputation you use an alias.<p>You don&#x27;t want to never use your real name. You want to be googleable, but you want it to be mostly positive.

I use my real name here and in a few other online communities. The choice wasn&#x27;t intentional. I&#x27;m just really self-critical about the dorkiness and unoriginality of any usernames I&#x27;m able to come up with. (Pop culture, video game, and sci-fi references tend not to age gracefully beyond a certain period in one&#x27;s life.)<p>HN has been my first major experiment with RealName™. It&#x27;s gone fairly well so far. People who want to talk shop can get a hold of me. People who want to talk trash can get a hold of me, too, but fortunately those people seem few and far between. Prospective employers are free to search my corpus on HN, and in doing so, they&#x27;ll probably find better content than they would on Facebook or elsewhere. In fact, I&#x27;ve had some opportunities come my way via HN that probably never would have elsewhere. (AngelList is the one possible challenger in that respect.)<p>Most important: using my real name forces me to think before I post. That&#x27;s not to say everything I post here is a gem. Far from it, as the record shows. But I don&#x27;t mind that the record shows something here.

The advantages of using your name can often outweigh the disadvantages.<p>Reputation is a valuable thing. You don&#x27;t gain a good reputation by hiding away. You build a good reputation by making a positive impression on lots of people over a long period of time. You can&#x27;t do that if you are always anonymous.<p>If I was hiring someone, I&#x27;d google them. And if nothing turned up, that would give a somewhat negative impression. Better than seeing them being a jerk or idiot or criminal, of course, but still.<p>On the other hand, if I saw a long history of them behaving intelligently and diplomatically, going back a long time, that would make a very good impression.<p>I say use your real name, but don&#x27;t be a dick, and don&#x27;t be stupid.

I dislike using my real name online - though in some cases (like HN) it&#x27;s pretty trivial to discover my identity.<p>My real fear isn&#x27;t having my more rant-y posts associated with my IRL life, but more extreme possibilities like 4chan&#x2F;Reddit doxxings and abuse.<p>I also no longer use the same handle as when I was a kid, so I&#x27;ve got that going for me.

I don&#x27;t mind using my real name online because it is stupidly generic (Daniel Levin). If someone wanted to identify me, my name wouldn&#x27;t be of much help to them. This is interesting because <i>my real name is less useful in being identifying than a screen name used on multiple websites</i>

For me, I find myself scared to participate using my real name. I think it&#x27;s mostly a lack of self-confidence. I actually just registered this username last night, hoping that anonymity will help me get over my fear of posting. Maybe in the future I&#x27;ll be more comfortable&#x2F;confident and use my real name, but for now, an anonymous username will be my crutch.

For what it&#x27;s worth, take a quick spin through the top voted commenters here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;leaders</a><p>Notice that the entire top 10 are using their real name or a trivial abbreviation thereof (apart from 3 accounts that got there through story submission and have essentially no comment history).<p>Notice the top 30 or so, where real names clearly dominate, with a few well-known strong pseudonyms in there.<p>Smart, interesting people with nothing to hide, offering good advice and participating in good discussions. That&#x27;s what this site is best at. And that&#x27;s the sort of thing one doesn&#x27;t generally need to hide behind a fake screen name to participate in.<p>At least, that&#x27;s why I only have this one real-name account here.

I always used a pseudonym and even change it from time to time. But if I want to have a job in software development, what choice is there? If you can&#x27;t rely on past experience you have to build something from the ground up.<p>I feel forced to have something on the net that screams &quot;me&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m unimportant. But who knows what the future brings? I don&#x27;t want to feel like _why. And to be honest, the whole archiving is beyond annoying. Barely anything we write is relevant in 10 years. Archive.org saves 99.999999% stuff that will not be looked at or even be of relevance, but might be enough to discredit you or even find you. Why does the internet even need to be this way? For me the internet was always about the present and the future.

A few years ago I tried to eliminate every possible trace of my real name online. It just doesn&#x27;t work, there will always be something.<p>So I gave up. Now I just try and make sure there is an accurate representation of my personality, views, and so on associated with my real name, online. Hopefully this gives a bit of balance to my profile in case I miscommunicate something in the future.

I use my real name. But then, I&#x27;m an analyst, blogger and columnist, so I&#x27;m going to get flamed one way or the other. :)<p>There is one or the other forum at which I post anonymously, and participate in the vitriol of anonymous political discussions. I make no effort to conceal my real identity, however. If I&#x27;m ever found out, I&#x27;ll claim that I&#x27;m not the one who started the intemperate excess.<p>(Yes, that phrase is redundant -- it deserves to be.)

There is no undo button when using your real name on the Internet.<p>With a nickname, you always have the option of associating it with your real identity at a later date if you so choose.

There is one very strong practical justification for pseudonyms: some people have very common names. There are thousands of people named Paul Rodriguez, probably hundreds named Paul M. Rodriguez, but there is only one person who goes by &quot;ruricolist&quot;. To the extent that I have one, my nickname <i>is</i> my reputation.

For me, it&#x27;s perfectly fine, even desirable.<p>It firmly roots in my mind that my words here will be seen as words from my person. That&#x27;s a good thing.

It&#x27;s bad practice to require someone to identify themselves completely merely to participate.

I have an uncommon name—as far as I can tell there&#x27;s only one other person using the internet who shares my name right now. That raises the stakes quite a bit...even using full real names, the majority of people have a small extra layer of obscurity: there are a bunch of other people around the world with the same name.<p>I liken using my real name online to having all of my in-person conversations be recorded and broadcast on TV. If I go to a bar down the street and meet some strangers from my neighborhood, I&#x27;m fairly anonymous, and our conversation is decently private. I can express unpopular opinions and have no record of it. I&#x27;m not on the record, and I don&#x27;t have to wonder what everyone I know and everyone I will ever know might think if they Googled me and found that conversation. If I go on a neighborhood blog and have the same conversation in the comments with my real name, I have the ear of, potentially, the entire world.<p>So I use my real name some places, and pseudonyms in others. Just how I might talk to coworkers, new friends, people at a party or business contacts without them instantly knowing everything I&#x27;ve ever said or done, having a pseudonym makes it possible to isolate your personal spaces online to some degree. It&#x27;s usually possible to gauge the scope of how many people are privy to a real life conversation, so I try to achieve a similar setup online. I don&#x27;t pretend that any of my user accounts online are at all truly anonymous, but they present a small barrier between online spaces. Much like meeting strangers in real life: they can probably find out who you are, but you are in control of how much information they have about you at any given momemt.

Using your real name makes the inevitable online abuse harder to take. It feel more real. Using something else makes it seem more abstract, its easier to handle such abuse.<p>I only use my real name when I have to, buying on line and government services for example.

My main concern with this is account security questions like &quot;what was your first car?&quot;. With how much information people put online these days, these questions are often pretty easy to crack. Some websites allow you to change your password after simply answering a couple of these.<p>I personally avoid this problem by generating &quot;answers&quot; as passwords in 1Password. But the vast majority of people don&#x27;t do this.

I mostly don&#x27;t, though I ended up using my real name on Twitter, which I post to regularly. Generally I try to avoid it whenever possible -- I hate being Googlable. Not really sure why I changed my mind for Twitter.<p>I have an unusual name combination, so there aren&#x27;t many others with my name. However, about 5 years ago, one of the few others started playing college football, so the search results are mostly for him, though I&#x27;m guessing he&#x27;s graduated by now.<p>Just now googled my name for the first time in a couple years probably. Still mostly about college football, with a few of my things scattered throughout, including my Twitter account and an archive of a mailing list where I used my real email address (which is my real name). Also at least a couple things still surfacing from the mid-90s, when I didn&#x27;t know any better.<p>My first Internet lesson to my kids will be: never use your real name online. I am glad most of my teenage real-name-using happened on local BBSs or things like AOL, and so it has vanished into the ether; my kids won&#x27;t be as lucky.

Information has value.<p>Posting everything under my username doesn&#x27;t create sufficient value for me. <i>Managing</i> my real-name profile is of some interest, and I do this to an extent, though largely it involves keeping my real name (or well-established) userIDs limited, while conducting most of my online interactions under various pseudonyms. These give me freedom of movement and expression and some freedom from tracking (though I&#x27;m under no illusions a dedicated national actor would have trouble finding me should it choose to do so, nor, quite likely, others).<p>What I&#x27;ve observed having been online for several decades is that most people seem to go through a lifecycle of online activity: early exploration, a wide-open persona, and often, starting once &quot;life gets real&quot; (usually somewhere in their 30s or 40s), either a withdrawal or a far-more-managed persona. I can point to numerous &quot;public figures&quot; of the 1990s whose online profiles are vastly more constrained: Jenny of Jennycam, Eve &quot;pi girl&quot; Astrid Andersson, Philip Greenspun (actually fairly active), Xeni Jardin, and many others. Even those who are still active are much more ... controlled in their presence.<p>If you&#x27;re in your 40s or older and have a significant online presence, odds good are you&#x27;re in marketing.<p>Even the principles in social networking have ... limited exposure. Sergey Brin&#x27;s most recent public G+ post was February 20, 2013. Larry Page posts something banal and&#x2F;or product-related once or twice a month. Page&#x27;s wife and girlfriend (may they never meet) have been conspicuously absent of G+ since news of status changes (not posted to G+) broke in August. Curious in the case of the girlfriend who&#x27;s in Google marketing ... but has been posting of late to Twitter.<p>Yeah, life has a way of getting real.

The rule for me is to give the least information required for the interaction to take place.<p>If someon is considering me for a job, it&#x27;s reasonable to give my full name.<p>If someone just wants to chat with my on reddit, they don&#x27;t need to know my full name.<p>If someone knows me outside of the internet, but we communicate through the internet, then I don&#x27;t need to provide my real name.

I found that my particularly malicious ex-gf (restraining order was eventually required) was using my online realname-based content to &quot;haunt&quot; me somewhat. I am also from the 90s internet where nicknames were more the norm, but I actually felt somehow &quot;mature&quot; (for lack of a better word, and no offense intended to anyone) when I decided to switch to my real name back in ~04 or so. Since then though, social networks have become ubiquitous to the point where some services only allow you to login with social network credentials.. It&#x27;s all gone mad; pre-interviewing and therefore pre-judgement based on your Google hits, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria.<p>I say head back to the 90s and obfuscate&#x2F;omit your ID where possible.

I use my name when signing up to things (not as a username, but when First&#x2F;Last asked for) because:<p>1. Builds a brand of me. 2. Following from #1, it reminds me to post things I want to be read that I would want my family and myself to be proud of.

I&#x27;m surprised no one has brought up that it depends some on what your real name is. Some names are more searchable than others, and some names are unique where others are shared with lots of people. If you are the only &quot;Klandon Forzuth&quot; on the planet then your online activities are much more easily found than if you are one of a million &quot;David Smith&quot;&#x27;s.<p>And sometimes people want to avoid being pre-judged, so Saheed may want to use a psuedonym when participating in an online discussion about 9&#x2F;11 regardless of his views.<p>If your name because something of a brand or source of credibility, you&#x27;ll probably want to use your real name. But if you&#x27;re well known in one domain but want to participate in another domain without the baggage of the other domain, you may want to not use your real name. Same reason why some writers use different names when they write in different genres, even if it&#x27;s not secret that they use multiple names.<p>I suppose there are several famous people participating in online activities that we are all unaware of because they don&#x27;t use their real names. It&#x27;s like avoiding being mobbed by fans on the street.<p>It you have an abusive spouse or stalker, you may not want to make your online activities so easily discoverable using your real name.<p>So it&#x27;s not just because people want to be rude that they use a pseudonym. It&#x27;s more complicated than that.

I&#x27;ve used my real name pretty much everywhere, and on the rare occasion that I use a nick of some sort, I link it to my blog and online presence. Intentionally or otherwise, I&#x27;ve led a very public online existence. I find it liberating. Maybe I&#x27;m narcissistic, but I&#x27;ve always enjoyed the idea of people being able to reach me. I think this only becomes a problem if people are camping in your garage to take pictures of your children... and I don&#x27;t anticipate that being a concern for me.<p>I do believe that access to anonymity is very important- it allows the oppressed, etc to speak up. But as a person in a generally privileged position, I find that leading a fully public life makes me more accountable, think harder, etc. I have all the upside with little to none of the downside. So it&#x27;s a simple decision for me.<p>I&#x27;ve been very outspoken about local political affairs, and I have strong opinions on things. Sometimes I&#x27;ve said things that have gotten me into trouble, but I make it a point to constructively engage the criticism I receive. I&#x27;ve always placed a high premium on having the space to speak up for what I believe is right, and I am headstrong and naive enough to declare that I wouldn&#x27;t want to work for or with anybody who thinks that&#x27;s an outright problem. It&#x27;s not in my nature to be secretive. It would end badly for both of us.<p>Do I have absolutely nothing to hide? Meh. I don&#x27;t want to make such a bold claim. I&#x27;m sure I&#x27;ve said and written some embarrassing stuff.<p>I can think of a few things I&#x27;d like to say from the cover of anonymity, but these are usually fun little sideproject-y type ideas, far down my priority list. I&#x27;d prefer to work on things publicly that get me into interesting circumstances as a person.

If you&#x27;re bland enough or rich enough that nothing you ever do online could be held against you, no. Otherwise yes.

I use my real name and my first name is enough to find me. I probably don&#x27;t fit the legal definition of &quot;public figure,&quot; but everyone I work with and many other people, mostly in the field I work in, know who I am.<p>So I can&#x27;t really avoid it. I&#x27;m not black, or gay, or Muslim, and I don&#x27;t have non-mainstream political views compared to people I live and work with, so I&#x27;m lucky enough to not experience the negative effects of being obviously identifiable online.<p>I can definitely see why many people would prefer to be pseudonymous, and why maintaining multiple online personas is useful. But I can barely keep up with my blog and product pages on multiple social media, and I&#x27;m still learning how to best use those to my advantage.

I don&#x27;t use my real name online in most cases. Being pseudoanonymous allows for more free flowing casual conversation[1]. Much like two buddies sitting in a bar allows for different conversational avenues than the same two buddies chatting in a crowded office.<p>I have no real reason to curate an online identity or reputation and I don&#x27;t want my online words to be only of a &quot;professional&quot; nature.<p>Also, I have no trouble being civil. Even if I was inspired to be a jerk, accountability need not be tethered to identity.<p>1: <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/11/the_future_of_e.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2008&#x2F;11&#x2F;the_future_of...</a>

It&#x27;s a psychological thing, a perception, on the part of the users of your nick. I know people who publicize their nick and real name, still post under their nick and their nick gets more attention by far. There&#x27;s something about human nature, I prefer to read stories about Notch more than Markus Perrson. I don&#x27;t know why, it&#x27;s just that way with the human brain.<p>I may have just had an epiphany, political figures use their real names (well mostly), maybe this is why their lives seem a bit characiatured to us. Perhaps this helps insulate them to a degree.

What about the worlds most pitiful one way hash function, like the nickname I&#x27;m using here which is &quot;obviously&quot; my initials?<p>Another classic in this genre is for decades I&#x27;ve watched the comedy of people advertising their ham radio callsign, then not realizing people can look them up, then realizing that almost no one knows how to look it up or cares, then figuring out it doesn&#x27;t really matter at all. So ham radio callsigns are yet another pitiful wanna be one way hash function.

Most people are very bad at consistently using a pseudonym and it&#x27;s been my experience that even an unskilled &quot;snoop&quot; can very easily tie a pseudonym to a real person. The same goes for nicknames and for other forms of identity obfuscation. Very few people do it right, it&#x27;s great advice, but in practice, it doesn&#x27;t work.<p>It&#x27;s much better to control the content you create and manage the distribution of that content in the way you are most comfortable with.

I choose to use my real name on many services, it really doesn&#x27;t bother me because I feel that I should be able to stand behind my words wherever I say them. It&#x27;s also a unique name and usually not taken.<p>I will admit there have been times I have been hesitant to say or post things, but more often than not it&#x27;s fine. If there is something I don&#x27;t want associated with me, I use an alternate account.

It never used to be but it&#x27;s rapidly getting to be, I use mine out of habit but I&#x27;m slowly changing to gibberish. Then again at some point it&#x27;s changed from a &quot;nickname&quot; to &quot;username&quot; to &quot;your real name&quot;.<p>In the olden days using numbers in a username was considered bad now it&#x27;s becoming as necessarily as using a mix of characters in a password.

I stand firmly behind everything I do on the internet or otherwise knowing full well the capability for people to take things out of context or cherry pick.<p>Having it out there allows for a full audit of what I am doing on the back end. On the front end, it ensures I am thinking through what I am writing so that I can ensure it reflects what I intend it to even if it is not all positive.

I&#x27;m currently running a survey to better understand perceptions and attitudes towards anonymous online communication. Feel free to contribute -- every response is greatly appreciated.<p><a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/onlineanonymity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.surveymonkey.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;onlineanonymity</a>

Everyone should just use some form of a Pig Latin user name. Maybe then add some spice to the name as well.<p>This way we can reasonably claim our good reputation if the result of our actions turns out ok, but if not we can borrow from each other and all get second chances.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure Pig Latin will fool the NSA too. :)

HN is about the only place I don&#x27;t use my real name these days, and I wish I could change my profile here so it was. If you&#x27;re a professional and try to be nice online, I doubt it&#x27;ll hurt you with anyone you care to be associated.

I believe there was an article a while back that showed it was trivial to track a person by their use of vocabulary and grammar style. But it&#x27;s probably still better to use a pseudonym, even if only to deter the laziest of tracking.

It&#x27;s a good idea to have some information online for your real name that you control. Otherwise eventually someone else will write some things about you that you can&#x27;t control and that will be what comes up first in Google.

As you can see from my username here on HN and everywhere else, I have decided to go with full disclosure. I think there are a lot of pros, and a few cons, some of them very annoying.

At some point I figured: why pretend to be anonymous when I&#x27;m obviously not?

Personally, I prefer to aim at fixing the problems with using real names. I was the one who mentioned the irony in this Slashdot submission for example: <a href="http://slashdot.org/submission/1778830/google-is-gagging-user-advocates" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slashdot.org&#x2F;submission&#x2F;1778830&#x2F;google-is-gagging-use...</a>

Yes.

Shit, I hope not!