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Then you'll probably appreciate the following info. You have commented excessively on HN over the years. If you have done any publicly accessible writing with y
by correlaroate 3y ago
Then you'll probably appreciate the following info. You have commented excessively on HN over the years. If you have done any publicly accessible writing with your real name attached, then it is quite easy to find out who you are by correlating writing styles. (If you don't have done so publicly then at least your employer will be able to do that using all internal writing on one hand and all your HN contributions on the other.)
Sounds far fetched, but it's really not that hard. Quite recently somebody hacked this for correlating HN accounts with each other and found alt accounts of people with high accuracy. Which people confirmed. And that wasn't even a serious attempt, just a little hack on a sunday night.
In a sense, it's all too late now since all your writing is already out there. But could be good to know for the future.
- sverona 3y agoIt's unclear to me what you're meant to do about this besides never post anything, which is depressing. Hence I don't even try.
- fho 3y agoI guess you can try to develop two very distinct writing styles. Or, as I do, consider everything posted to HN to be linked to me. My handle is actually an abbreviation of my full name. I consider HN to be "professional" correspondence.
- balder1991 3y agoYou can have LLMs rewrite your texts.
- tjoff 3y agoAnd we are back to the depressing part where you can't even bother.
- correlaroate 3y agoOne option is to change HN accounts often. Every few posts you need to make a new one. Successfully correlating writing styles needs some data and if there are only a few sentences to go off then that's not enough. I know that the site guidelines discourage that, but what can you do.
- ineedasername 3y agoAll true, but that’s a level personal detail I’m prepared to live with having it out in the world. There’s a limit to how much mental energy I’m prepared to put into worrying about doxing, and it doesn’t go this far. But it is a remarkable aspect of just how much we can be fingerprinted by so many different things we do in life.