4 ms·

How Unique and Traceable are Usernames?

18 points by adulau 16y ago

hollerith 16y ago
I picked a user name whose entropy is high enough that probably no one else will pick it on any site, and I often choose to reuse it on new sites expressly so that I can be traced across sites. (My HN user name predates this choice of user name.)
- epochwolf 16y ago
  I did the same thing. My name was unique 3 years ago and still is from what I've been able to tell.
  - coolgeek 16y ago
    I've found people on facebook and freenet using mine... and stealing somebody else's name is definitely not cool
BoppreH 16y ago
My username is, AFAIK, unique. Being able to recognize the same person can be extremely useful if you build things on different places. I think the trick is detaching it from your real life. If you are using the same username, don't list your address or add your IRL friends.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Doesn't work as well when your username is firstname_lastname.
  - cosgroveb 16y ago
    I made a conscious decision to use my real name online. I do hope that I am never harassed IRL due to my opinions online or provoke the wrath of someone like Anonymous, however...
solipsist 16y ago
From the Discussion section: This work shows that it is clearly possible to tie digital identities together and, most likely, to real identities in many cases only using ubiquitous usernames. We also showed that, even though users are free to change their usernames at will, they do not do it frequently and, when they do, it is in a predictable way. Our technique might then be used as an additional tool when investigating online crime. It is however also subject to abuse and could result in breaches in privacy. Advertisers could automatically build online profiles of users with high accuracy and minimum effort, without the consent of the users involved. From the Conclusion section: We extend this technique to cope with profiles that are linked but have different usernames and tie our problem to the well known problem of record linkage. All the methods we tried have high precision in linking username couples that belong to the same users. Ultimately we show a new class of profiling techniques that can be exploited to link together and abuse the public information stored on online social networks and web services in general.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
synnik 16y ago
My username was 100% unique from 1991, when I first started using it, until some time around 2005. (At least according to veronica, then altavista, and now google.) In the last 5 years, enough other people have picked it up that the only front-page Google search that is actually me is the HN link. Draw what conclusions you will, but I think that as more of the world's population gets online, the uniqueness of the name alone is going to be more and more questionable. But tie it to a domain/site/location, and then you have something.

18 points by adulau 16y ago

I picked a user name whose entropy is high enough that probably no one else will pick it on any site, and I often choose to reuse it on new sites expressly so that I can be traced across sites. (My HN user name predates this choice of user name.)

epochwolf 16y ago
I did the same thing. My name was unique 3 years ago and still is from what I've been able to tell.
- coolgeek 16y ago
  I've found people on facebook and freenet using mine... and stealing somebody else's name is definitely not cool

BoppreH 16y ago

My username is, AFAIK, unique. Being able to recognize the same person can be extremely useful if you build things on different places. I think the trick is detaching it from your real life. If you are using the same username, don't list your address or add your IRL friends.

pavel_lishin 16y ago
Doesn't work as well when your username is firstname_lastname.
- cosgroveb 16y ago
  I made a conscious decision to use my real name online. I do hope that I am never harassed IRL due to my opinions online or provoke the wrath of someone like Anonymous, however...

solipsist 16y ago

From the Discussion section: This work shows that it is clearly possible to tie digital identities together and, most likely, to real identities in many cases only using ubiquitous usernames. We also showed that, even though users are free to change their usernames at will, they do not do it frequently and, when they do, it is in a predictable way. Our technique might then be used as an additional tool when investigating online crime. It is however also subject to abuse and could result in breaches in privacy. Advertisers could automatically build online profiles of users with high accuracy and minimum effort, without the consent of the users involved. From the Conclusion section: We extend this technique to cope with profiles that are linked but have different usernames and tie our problem to the well known problem of record linkage. All the methods we tried have high precision in linking username couples that belong to the same users. Ultimately we show a new class of profiling techniques that can be exploited to link together and abuse the public information stored on online social networks and web services in general.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

synnik 16y ago

My username was 100% unique from 1991, when I first started using it, until some time around 2005. (At least according to veronica, then altavista, and now google.) In the last 5 years, enough other people have picked it up that the only front-page Google search that is actually me is the HN link. Draw what conclusions you will, but I think that as more of the world's population gets online, the uniqueness of the name alone is going to be more and more questionable. But tie it to a domain/site/location, and then you have something.