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1) Promptly stop saying anything interesting under your real name. Opt out of all social media except to post messages like "Congratulations on the baby!". This

1) Promptly stop saying anything interesting under your real name. Opt out of all social media except to post messages like "Congratulations on the baby!". This will prevent you from making any enemies who know your real name, and reduce the chances anyone will want to doxx you. 2) Start adopting new pseudonyms. Use a different one on every site, and a password keeper to help you stay logged in. If you happen to forget, don't worry. Treat every account as disposable. These are not "you". This is not "your brand". These are merely tools that allow to into a walled garden party wearing the mask of anonymity. 3) Do not mix your two online personas. Keep your politics, jokes, and personality in your pseudononymous accounts. Keep your boring safe opinions and pictures of dogs in your primary account. Don't talk about anything in your real life in your pseudonymous accounts, even the weather. Reserve that kind of discussion for in-person friends only. If you make a mistake, just delete the account and make a new one.

300bps 6y ago
2a. Unique usernames per site are essential. Even better if you use common words that will have millions of hits in search engines. 4. Don’t use the same profile picture on multiple sites. Tineye will link them together.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  Do people still use Tineye with the advent of Google's reverse image search?
  - thatcat 6y ago
    yes google image doesn't do fingerprinting technique anymore, they moved to something that does categorical matching and it isn't that good for exact image matching
mumblerino 6y ago
This is what I do. I have “work profiles” and for everything else I just come up with a username every few months, leaving behind any “karma” I don’t need. For example the username of this month for HN is mumblerino.
- jariel 6y ago
  Yes 'letting go of karma' is definitely a spiritual recommendation, that might very well ironically have the exact same cathartic application in the online social media universe. It's like we need an 18th century Swami's guidance on how to deal with 21st century woes: 'let go of karma'.
  - throaweyprimy 6y ago
    You are hilarious!
kovac 6y ago
One loophole here is that statistical/machine learning analytics tools may still be able to correlate these posts as coming from the same writer. We should probably also use a tool that just converts our posts into a generic style and remove any personal touches like the usual vocabulary, expressions, punctuation styles someone might use. Is there anything like that out there?
- RKearney 6y ago
  I tried changing my writing style on my different personas and it is extremely difficult to keep up with. On one I'd never capitalize anything, another I would never use apostrophes, and then I had one that always used the wrong form of they're/their/there or to/too. Despite all those efforts, I could never consistently change my vocabulary and I did have someone call out a post of mine and link it to secondary accounts. I ended up ignoring the allegation and I never heard from the person again. If there was some service to normalize, or better yet randomize writing styles, I'd love to know about them.
  - ghufran_syed 6y ago
    I don’t think you actually need to change the writing style, you just need to make sure that the corpus of writing for each and every identity is small. Then the error bounds on the probability that any particular piece of writing is by the same author as another piece of writing on the internet will be so wide as to effectively make such analysis useless. Ideally, any site like reddit that allows pseudonymity would have a super lightweight way of creating multiple parallel new usernames for you to post under, with a way for you to see a coherent view of everything your multiple identities have posted, but where to everyone else, each identity looks like a separate user.
- teetertater 6y ago
  It's exceedingly simple to correlate posts. I was able to use the stylo[1] R package to identify authors with just 3 tweets (requires testing against suspected authors), with 100% accuracy. Robin Camille's master's thesis project[2] is one of the tools available to protect yourself against attacks like these. I had the idea to make something like this but learned that she beat me to it during my research phase. [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stylo/stylo.pdf https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stylo/stylo.pdf [2] https://github.com/robincamille/nondescript https://github.com/robincamille/nondescript
d3nj4l 6y ago
To add on - having an account under your real name that's safe and boring is essential. Some jobs and visa applications require you to disclose your social media, and having a safe account to show there is necessary.
- celticninja 6y ago
  What if you dont have social media accounts? Surely you can just tell these jobs/visa applications you don't have any.
  - d3nj4l 6y ago
    That stands out as a red flag in this day and age, really. Having a simple account with your real name that has a few dog pics is far more stealthy than claiming you really don't interact with social media at all.
    - Kim_Bruning 6y ago
      Do you have a source that says that that stands out as a red flag? And in which countries? As far as I know, only the USA has gone so far as to ask for social media accounts for some visas. (I might be out of date)
      - d3nj4l 6y ago
        It's just my personal experience. I've had funny looks given to me when I say I'm not on facebook, and when I was off whatsapp for a brief while people refused to believe I had a smartphone but didn't use whatsapp. E: I'm speaking more about job applications. The US Visa application requirement is of course already being litigated, and hopefully will soon not be a requirement any more.
        fluffernutter 6y ago
        Ah, so it's just a story you are telling yourself and us. That makes a lot more sense!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
paul_f 6y ago
The flaw in this is that in 10 years, saying "congratulations on the baby!" might be considered extremely distasteful.

300bps 6y ago

2a. Unique usernames per site are essential. Even better if you use common words that will have millions of hits in search engines. 4. Don’t use the same profile picture on multiple sites. Tineye will link them together.

jimmaswell 6y ago
Do people still use Tineye with the advent of Google's reverse image search?
- thatcat 6y ago
  yes google image doesn't do fingerprinting technique anymore, they moved to something that does categorical matching and it isn't that good for exact image matching

mumblerino 6y ago

This is what I do. I have “work profiles” and for everything else I just come up with a username every few months, leaving behind any “karma” I don’t need. For example the username of this month for HN is mumblerino.

jariel 6y ago
Yes 'letting go of karma' is definitely a spiritual recommendation, that might very well ironically have the exact same cathartic application in the online social media universe. It's like we need an 18th century Swami's guidance on how to deal with 21st century woes: 'let go of karma'.
- throaweyprimy 6y ago
  You are hilarious!

kovac 6y ago

One loophole here is that statistical/machine learning analytics tools may still be able to correlate these posts as coming from the same writer. We should probably also use a tool that just converts our posts into a generic style and remove any personal touches like the usual vocabulary, expressions, punctuation styles someone might use. Is there anything like that out there?

RKearney 6y ago
I tried changing my writing style on my different personas and it is extremely difficult to keep up with. On one I'd never capitalize anything, another I would never use apostrophes, and then I had one that always used the wrong form of they're/their/there or to/too. Despite all those efforts, I could never consistently change my vocabulary and I did have someone call out a post of mine and link it to secondary accounts. I ended up ignoring the allegation and I never heard from the person again. If there was some service to normalize, or better yet randomize writing styles, I'd love to know about them.
- ghufran_syed 6y ago
  I don’t think you actually need to change the writing style, you just need to make sure that the corpus of writing for each and every identity is small. Then the error bounds on the probability that any particular piece of writing is by the same author as another piece of writing on the internet will be so wide as to effectively make such analysis useless. Ideally, any site like reddit that allows pseudonymity would have a super lightweight way of creating multiple parallel new usernames for you to post under, with a way for you to see a coherent view of everything your multiple identities have posted, but where to everyone else, each identity looks like a separate user.
teetertater 6y ago
It's exceedingly simple to correlate posts. I was able to use the stylo[1] R package to identify authors with just 3 tweets (requires testing against suspected authors), with 100% accuracy. Robin Camille's master's thesis project[2] is one of the tools available to protect yourself against attacks like these. I had the idea to make something like this but learned that she beat me to it during my research phase. [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stylo/stylo.pdf https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stylo/stylo.pdf [2] https://github.com/robincamille/nondescript https://github.com/robincamille/nondescript

d3nj4l 6y ago

To add on - having an account under your real name that's safe and boring is essential. Some jobs and visa applications require you to disclose your social media, and having a safe account to show there is necessary.

celticninja 6y ago
What if you dont have social media accounts? Surely you can just tell these jobs/visa applications you don't have any.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  That stands out as a red flag in this day and age, really. Having a simple account with your real name that has a few dog pics is far more stealthy than claiming you really don't interact with social media at all.
  - Kim_Bruning 6y ago
    Do you have a source that says that that stands out as a red flag? And in which countries? As far as I know, only the USA has gone so far as to ask for social media accounts for some visas. (I might be out of date)
    - d3nj4l 6y ago
      It's just my personal experience. I've had funny looks given to me when I say I'm not on facebook, and when I was off whatsapp for a brief while people refused to believe I had a smartphone but didn't use whatsapp. E: I'm speaking more about job applications. The US Visa application requirement is of course already being litigated, and hopefully will soon not be a requirement any more.
      - fluffernutter 6y ago
        Ah, so it's just a story you are telling yourself and us. That makes a lot more sense!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

paul_f 6y ago

The flaw in this is that in 10 years, saying "congratulations on the baby!" might be considered extremely distasteful.