16 ms·

Stuff like this makes one wonder that even though unfortunate, it is time to consider naming your babies with names that are extremely unlikely to be common. he

Stuff like this makes one wonder that even though unfortunate, it is time to consider naming your babies with names that are extremely unlikely to be common. heck, may be even add a salt to it while we are at it. Ok the salt part is a joke but seriously, one has to feel for those who share their names with people on these "special" lists by Governments. May be a start-up idea for prospective parents to run the names and ensure that before they name their babies, those are not on some list. But then what if someone gets on the list later on ? So it seems like a very unique name is really the option. Also, do these special lists really flag people just by their names ? really ? I mean how many John Smiths can there be in this world and god forbid if one of them decides to do something "special". What about other attributes ? Is it really hard to have the unique key as (first name,last name, gender, age, place of birth, citizenship, blah blah) instead of just (first name, last name) and boom, you are flagged. EDIT: Based on some comments, it might be a good idea to have a legal name that is very unique and a social name/nickname that is the usual John Smithy type. This way, when you deal with legal/customs whatever, use the crazily unique legal name while on the internet, use a nickname. Also, while we are discussing names, I seriously suggest you to register domain names (and gmail/fb whatever) for yourself and kids if not already. Again unfortunate, but reality of this era. I have already booked domains names for my 1 year old and another one who is coming soon.

iheartmemcache 13y ago
There's an interesting downside to naming your child something very unique- you become significantly more Google-able than "Tom Jones". Potential employers, landlords, spouses, and other people will have a very easy time seeing all of your failures and folly.
- alsocasey 13y ago
  Legal name and social media name don't necessarily have to match.
  - wlesieutre 13y ago
    Tell that to Google and Facebook
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    Not today. Do you think that will hold true for the entirety of your child's 80+ years on this Earth?
    - ngpio 13y ago
      No, but that doesn't imply that it shouldn't hold true for the entirety of the child's legal childhood. There's always been a feature of childhood that I feel is paramount: the freedom to alter one's identity. The child is still in beta; they're a person that's not officially released to the public. Forcing them, from the start, to stick a single identity can be problematic psychologically and socially. Encouraging situational pseudonymity is not equal to the revocation of one's legal identity, from now until death. I can say with certainty that, had I not had the benefits of pseudonymity offered by the internet of the 90s and 00s, I would be a fundamentally broken person.
      - dangrossman 13y ago
        The assumption that this "freedom" remain available in the future is what I challenged, not a social obligation not to avail yourself of it. It may become technically or legally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in the future. If you give your child a unique name, and the ability to operate under a different name is not available, then you've guaranteed their activity (childhood or otherwise) is easily cataloged and searchable.
        ngpio 13y ago
        > And if it becomes technically or illegally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in 10 years? That this won't happen is the assumption I challenged, not some social obligation not to choose to use a pseudonym. Then we should work to make that future unlikely. Even if things come to be as you describe, we should build in strict social/technical safeguards of (at the very least) pseudonymity until we much better understand the development the human mind. [edit in response to your edited post] It seems we're pretty much in agreement, just coming at the issue from different points of devil's advocacy.
- mcv 13y ago
  And having an unusual name can also make you run afoul of Google+'s "no unusual name" policy, where accounts get blocked just because someone at Google thinks it can't be a real name (they're often wrong).
  - alex_anglin 13y ago
    Some might consider that a feature.
    - illuminate 13y ago
      "Some might consider that a feature." Yes, and those people would be rather utopian about how a lack of anonymity helps clean up the internet. Most trolls are proud of their idiocy.
  - officemonkey 13y ago
    Facebook also has a "no unusual name" policy, but it's very randomly enforced. My friend's first name is "Spider." It is not her birth name, but she's used it professionally and personally her entire adult life. When she signed up for Facebook they told her she couldn't be "Spider" because somebody (Sony probably) decided that wasn't a "real" name (Spider Robinson and Spider Sabich notwithstanding.) If she wanted to use "Spider" Facebook needed a legal ID with that name on it (which she does not have.) So she registered under "Spidie" instead with no further problems.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- Alex_MJ 13y ago
  THIS. I have a unique last name - there is absolutely no ambiguity whenever anything shows up. Whenever a website (or anything offline that might put rankings or whatever online) wants me to use my real name, I usually default to "Alex", "Alex M/MJ" or "Alex (gibberish)" depending on their guidelines. What they view as a policy that "encourages openness", I view as something that will guide first impressions when people google me unto eternity. Even if it's not controversial, it's the first thing a potential client or employer sees when they type things into google, and I don't want to be reckless with that. I don't want to have to view every minor action that I make on a website as something that's potentially going to be on the front page of google's results for my name. When I was in HS, my friends had a poker league, and we all had nicknames and personas - someone put up a page with hilarious (but decidedly unprofessional) caricatures and quotes and it was the first thing that showed up under my name. I noticed it and asked my friend to change it, which he though was hilarious but understood and did. Same for Meetup. A long time ago I went to some meetups that could potentially be alienating to some folks (agnostics and whatever, way back in the day when I felt it was worth arguing about) and BOOM, google front page for my name. If I had a client who was somewhat religious, I don't care at all but I don't want that to show up and all of a sudden I'm accidentally alienating people. For showing up to something. Whenever I run a 5k or do anything remotely prestigious I always use my full name so that the front page of google just gets filled with that kind of thing in case anything else that's potentially a liability pops up and I don't notice it. It's annoying.
  - CWuestefeld 13y ago
    I also have a very unique name. BOOM, google front page for my name Trying to fly under the radar, as you do, may be some solution, but it makes the mistakes like this one stick out even more boldly. I've found that over the years, there's enough of a heap on the web that matches my name, that garbage like you mention is overwhelmed by the more meaningful stuff. A search for me typically turns up my LinkedIn profile, the product page on Amazon for a book I co-authored, some CodeProject articles, and stuff like that. Just having a life's worth of stuff out there lets a smart search engine ignore much of the stuff that I'd want them to ignore.
  - SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
- JshWright 13y ago
  I enjoy the fact that my name, Josh Wright, is reasonably common. Even if you try to make it a bit more specific by adding the city I live in, Syracuse, I'm buried under results for a guy who used to play basketball for Syracuse University.
- 5teev 13y ago
  It's bad enough having a nearly--but not actually--unique name and frequently getting confused for the other one.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  I always considered this to be an upside. Being googlable always felt to me like a synonym to existing; it's a way for potential employers to see that I know stuff because of all the texts and hobby projects; for potential future spouses/other people to see that I'm an interesting person who does something creative, etc. Funny how I didn't notice when being easily googlable started to be considered a bad thing.
  - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
    Then you've never had a bad run-in with someone who was decidedly unhinged.
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      I admit I haven't, though I know people who had. I wonder how many people encounter such situation.
      - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
        I'm not sure. I've been lucky enough to not have to worry about it, but I've definitely seen it (mostly of the "stalker" variety) and can easily understand why someone would want to remain on the "down low". I don't mean to pile on you personally, but this issue always pushes my buttons. It seems like whenever it comes up, there's always those who are absolutely incredulous that anyone wouldn't want to be all over the internet. Worse, I've even seen the reaction where some people think that it means the person must be untrustworthy, as if they are the ones who did something wrong. If someone wants to be all over the front page of Google when someone searches their name, I think that's fine if that's what they want. Just don't assume that everyone wants (or should want) the same thing.
- marklit 13y ago
  If they find you on linked in, they can google reverse image search your profile picture and probably come up with quite a bit. Now imagine google introducing facial recognition search.
wyager 13y ago
We're thinking about naming him Bob w}Wq!m_2Smith.
- ghostDancer 13y ago
  Obligatory XKCD reference: https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/
  - dangayle 13y ago
    Dang, you got it first. Good call.
loceng 13y ago
That is the wrong direction to go.
nullc 13y ago
It's better to name your child something so common that any listing of their name would be insanely disruptive. This protects against more cases, and also doesn't degrade their privacy.
- csense 13y ago
  I name my child "" (the empty string).
csense 13y ago
> ensure that before they name their babies, those [names] are not on some list You could go one step further: Give your child a name such that, if someone tries to put the name on a list in the future, they'll lose their entire database instead [1]. [1] http://xkcd.com/327/ http://xkcd.com/327/
- NhanH 13y ago
  For all we know, they might be storing names as plain text files though.
  - MarkPNeyer 13y ago
    c'mon; give government technologists the benefit of the doubt. they've been around long enough to know what's up. it's gotta be punch-cards for the hollerith tabulator.
  - lstamour 13y ago
    Add a \n or two then. ;-)
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      Or a single \r ;).
      - tekacs 13y ago
        How about a \0? :)
    - pjscott 13y ago
      If you create usernames or passwords ending in a backslash, like "foo\", you'd be surprised how many web sites break.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 13y ago
Honestly, I think the opposite approach makes more sense. Get to the level of names so common sanctions are impossible. If a name is now something many entity a long distance away can just sanction, best to be John Smith or David Jones since he would be at least protected by numbers Famous last words, I know but it would be hard to sanction all the world's David Jones' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jones
- electic 13y ago
  Honestly, the government doesn't care how common your name is. It will ban it, sanction it, etc. We can see this in the no-fly list. They really don't care if all Smith's are banned. Even better for them.
- notahacker 13y ago
  Stephen Law is a fairly common, generic name though, returning plenty of names in a Facebook search, including one I went to school with. Indeed the sanctioned "Stephen Law", whose Western moniker is also often spelled "Steven" perhaps chose it precisely because it sounds so generic and difficult to infer nationality from.
  - beachstartup 13y ago
    nitpick: all names are hard to infer nationality from. you could be thinking of ethnicity, which might be easier, but nationality definitely not see: stephen law. american? british? australian? new zealand? canadian? south african? dutch? french? danish? jamaican? bahamian? chinese? singaporean? HK? nationality means citizenship, which means which passport you carry. it has nothing to do with names.
    - notahacker 13y ago
      I agree that the names are actually rooted in ethno-linguistic groups rather than citizenship, but it's actually very easy to infer that someone calling himself Htun Myint Naing probably holds a Myanmar passport, and citizenship is the most pertinent fact when you're doing business internationally, especially when you're from a pariah state. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to guess the nationality of most people with standard Spanish and English names, and people can make a lot of wrong inferences about nationality because of migration, intermarriage (recently I've lived with Britons with very obviously Polish, Italian and Spanish-diaspora names respectively) or ethnic groups overlapping borders. You'd also be wrong in thinking that Lo Ping Zhong was likely to be a citizen of China rather than Myanmar, but you'd still be more inclined to background check his company more than Stephen Law's.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 13y ago
My name is essentially unique. Neither first nor last are that rare but they're not that common either and of somewhat different ethnicities. (Someone else in the last century seemed to have the same name but they had no Internet footprint as far as I could tell.) Personally, I don't mind that if you pull up my name, you find me though YMMV. The really bad thing IMO would be having a fairly uncommon name and sharing it with someone notorious. You don't even need to get into Do-Not-Fly lists and the like. I had a classmate a long while back (pre-web) who lived in New York and he apparently shared his name with someone who got into a very public spat with George Steinbrenner. My classmate got all sorts of phone calls and even death threats.
dubfan 13y ago
That doesn't seem like an optimal solution. Ideally these lists should match against more data than just a name. Financial institutions seem to work this way. I share my name with a convicted Ponzi schemer currently sitting in federal prison, but I've never had a problem getting credit or opening bank accounts.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Financial institutions match it against more data if that data is provided - if money is wired to "Stephen Law ID#1234" (simplifying), then it can be positively verified as being not the 'forbidden' Stephen Law, but if some item or money is sent to simply "Stephen Law" w/o any extra information, then it would be restricted, since the system is deny-by-default, of course.
altero 13y ago
My government allows me to have multiple passports, because of various problems with visa. I think I should also ask for multiple identities because of all this spying and anti-terrorists. BTW it costs a few hundred bugs to change name
dangayle 13y ago
Reminds me of little Bobby Tables: http://xkcd.com/327/ http://xkcd.com/327/
abvdasker 13y ago
Better yet, name your children after US politicians and bureaucrats. They'll probably be whitelisted for life.
drawkbox 13y ago
Easy solution, name new babies a v4 UUID.
sorahn 13y ago
I wonder if I can change my legal last name to a public bitcoin address...
- cjg 13y ago
  And then you lose the private key...
vacri 13y ago
it is time to consider naming your babies with names that are extremely unlikely to be common Apart from being overly paranoid, this is not really workable at a demographic level. Far easier, demographically, to just change your name in the rare event where this happens.
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
>May be a start-up idea for prospective parents to run the names and ensure that before they name their babies, those are not on some list. // I imagine just googling a name is pretty close to being a certain test for it's existence.
ZoFreX 13y ago
> Also, do these special lists really flag people just by their names? Yes. Yes they do. Welcome to the security theatre!
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This is not a real solution. I mean its fun to talk about but not a solution.

iheartmemcache 13y ago

There's an interesting downside to naming your child something very unique- you become significantly more Google-able than "Tom Jones". Potential employers, landlords, spouses, and other people will have a very easy time seeing all of your failures and folly.

alsocasey 13y ago
Legal name and social media name don't necessarily have to match.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  Tell that to Google and Facebook
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Not today. Do you think that will hold true for the entirety of your child's 80+ years on this Earth?
  - ngpio 13y ago
    No, but that doesn't imply that it shouldn't hold true for the entirety of the child's legal childhood. There's always been a feature of childhood that I feel is paramount: the freedom to alter one's identity. The child is still in beta; they're a person that's not officially released to the public. Forcing them, from the start, to stick a single identity can be problematic psychologically and socially. Encouraging situational pseudonymity is not equal to the revocation of one's legal identity, from now until death. I can say with certainty that, had I not had the benefits of pseudonymity offered by the internet of the 90s and 00s, I would be a fundamentally broken person.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      The assumption that this "freedom" remain available in the future is what I challenged, not a social obligation not to avail yourself of it. It may become technically or legally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in the future. If you give your child a unique name, and the ability to operate under a different name is not available, then you've guaranteed their activity (childhood or otherwise) is easily cataloged and searchable.
      - ngpio 13y ago
        > And if it becomes technically or illegally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in 10 years? That this won't happen is the assumption I challenged, not some social obligation not to choose to use a pseudonym. Then we should work to make that future unlikely. Even if things come to be as you describe, we should build in strict social/technical safeguards of (at the very least) pseudonymity until we much better understand the development the human mind. [edit in response to your edited post] It seems we're pretty much in agreement, just coming at the issue from different points of devil's advocacy.
mcv 13y ago
And having an unusual name can also make you run afoul of Google+'s "no unusual name" policy, where accounts get blocked just because someone at Google thinks it can't be a real name (they're often wrong).
- alex_anglin 13y ago
  Some might consider that a feature.
  - illuminate 13y ago
    "Some might consider that a feature." Yes, and those people would be rather utopian about how a lack of anonymity helps clean up the internet. Most trolls are proud of their idiocy.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  Facebook also has a "no unusual name" policy, but it's very randomly enforced. My friend's first name is "Spider." It is not her birth name, but she's used it professionally and personally her entire adult life. When she signed up for Facebook they told her she couldn't be "Spider" because somebody (Sony probably) decided that wasn't a "real" name (Spider Robinson and Spider Sabich notwithstanding.) If she wanted to use "Spider" Facebook needed a legal ID with that name on it (which she does not have.) So she registered under "Spidie" instead with no further problems.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
Alex_MJ 13y ago
THIS. I have a unique last name - there is absolutely no ambiguity whenever anything shows up. Whenever a website (or anything offline that might put rankings or whatever online) wants me to use my real name, I usually default to "Alex", "Alex M/MJ" or "Alex (gibberish)" depending on their guidelines. What they view as a policy that "encourages openness", I view as something that will guide first impressions when people google me unto eternity. Even if it's not controversial, it's the first thing a potential client or employer sees when they type things into google, and I don't want to be reckless with that. I don't want to have to view every minor action that I make on a website as something that's potentially going to be on the front page of google's results for my name. When I was in HS, my friends had a poker league, and we all had nicknames and personas - someone put up a page with hilarious (but decidedly unprofessional) caricatures and quotes and it was the first thing that showed up under my name. I noticed it and asked my friend to change it, which he though was hilarious but understood and did. Same for Meetup. A long time ago I went to some meetups that could potentially be alienating to some folks (agnostics and whatever, way back in the day when I felt it was worth arguing about) and BOOM, google front page for my name. If I had a client who was somewhat religious, I don't care at all but I don't want that to show up and all of a sudden I'm accidentally alienating people. For showing up to something. Whenever I run a 5k or do anything remotely prestigious I always use my full name so that the front page of google just gets filled with that kind of thing in case anything else that's potentially a liability pops up and I don't notice it. It's annoying.
- CWuestefeld 13y ago
  I also have a very unique name. BOOM, google front page for my name Trying to fly under the radar, as you do, may be some solution, but it makes the mistakes like this one stick out even more boldly. I've found that over the years, there's enough of a heap on the web that matches my name, that garbage like you mention is overwhelmed by the more meaningful stuff. A search for me typically turns up my LinkedIn profile, the product page on Amazon for a book I co-authored, some CodeProject articles, and stuff like that. Just having a life's worth of stuff out there lets a smart search engine ignore much of the stuff that I'd want them to ignore.
- SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
JshWright 13y ago
I enjoy the fact that my name, Josh Wright, is reasonably common. Even if you try to make it a bit more specific by adding the city I live in, Syracuse, I'm buried under results for a guy who used to play basketball for Syracuse University.
5teev 13y ago
It's bad enough having a nearly--but not actually--unique name and frequently getting confused for the other one.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
I always considered this to be an upside. Being googlable always felt to me like a synonym to existing; it's a way for potential employers to see that I know stuff because of all the texts and hobby projects; for potential future spouses/other people to see that I'm an interesting person who does something creative, etc. Funny how I didn't notice when being easily googlable started to be considered a bad thing.
- ShirtlessRod 13y ago
  Then you've never had a bad run-in with someone who was decidedly unhinged.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    I admit I haven't, though I know people who had. I wonder how many people encounter such situation.
    - ShirtlessRod 13y ago
      I'm not sure. I've been lucky enough to not have to worry about it, but I've definitely seen it (mostly of the "stalker" variety) and can easily understand why someone would want to remain on the "down low". I don't mean to pile on you personally, but this issue always pushes my buttons. It seems like whenever it comes up, there's always those who are absolutely incredulous that anyone wouldn't want to be all over the internet. Worse, I've even seen the reaction where some people think that it means the person must be untrustworthy, as if they are the ones who did something wrong. If someone wants to be all over the front page of Google when someone searches their name, I think that's fine if that's what they want. Just don't assume that everyone wants (or should want) the same thing.
marklit 13y ago
If they find you on linked in, they can google reverse image search your profile picture and probably come up with quite a bit. Now imagine google introducing facial recognition search.

wyager 13y ago

We're thinking about naming him Bob w}Wq!m_2Smith.

ghostDancer 13y ago
Obligatory XKCD reference: https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/
- dangayle 13y ago
  Dang, you got it first. Good call.

loceng 13y ago

That is the wrong direction to go.

nullc 13y ago

It's better to name your child something so common that any listing of their name would be insanely disruptive. This protects against more cases, and also doesn't degrade their privacy.

csense 13y ago
I name my child "" (the empty string).

csense 13y ago

> ensure that before they name their babies, those [names] are not on some list You could go one step further: Give your child a name such that, if someone tries to put the name on a list in the future, they'll lose their entire database instead [1]. [1] http://xkcd.com/327/ http://xkcd.com/327/

NhanH 13y ago
For all we know, they might be storing names as plain text files though.
- MarkPNeyer 13y ago
  c'mon; give government technologists the benefit of the doubt. they've been around long enough to know what's up. it's gotta be punch-cards for the hollerith tabulator.
- lstamour 13y ago
  Add a \n or two then. ;-)
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Or a single \r ;).
    - tekacs 13y ago
      How about a \0? :)
  - pjscott 13y ago
    If you create usernames or passwords ending in a backslash, like "foo\", you'd be surprised how many web sites break.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 13y ago

Honestly, I think the opposite approach makes more sense. Get to the level of names so common sanctions are impossible. If a name is now something many entity a long distance away can just sanction, best to be John Smith or David Jones since he would be at least protected by numbers Famous last words, I know but it would be hard to sanction all the world's David Jones' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jones

electic 13y ago
Honestly, the government doesn't care how common your name is. It will ban it, sanction it, etc. We can see this in the no-fly list. They really don't care if all Smith's are banned. Even better for them.
notahacker 13y ago
Stephen Law is a fairly common, generic name though, returning plenty of names in a Facebook search, including one I went to school with. Indeed the sanctioned "Stephen Law", whose Western moniker is also often spelled "Steven" perhaps chose it precisely because it sounds so generic and difficult to infer nationality from.
- beachstartup 13y ago
  nitpick: all names are hard to infer nationality from. you could be thinking of ethnicity, which might be easier, but nationality definitely not see: stephen law. american? british? australian? new zealand? canadian? south african? dutch? french? danish? jamaican? bahamian? chinese? singaporean? HK? nationality means citizenship, which means which passport you carry. it has nothing to do with names.
  - notahacker 13y ago
    I agree that the names are actually rooted in ethno-linguistic groups rather than citizenship, but it's actually very easy to infer that someone calling himself Htun Myint Naing probably holds a Myanmar passport, and citizenship is the most pertinent fact when you're doing business internationally, especially when you're from a pariah state. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to guess the nationality of most people with standard Spanish and English names, and people can make a lot of wrong inferences about nationality because of migration, intermarriage (recently I've lived with Britons with very obviously Polish, Italian and Spanish-diaspora names respectively) or ethnic groups overlapping borders. You'd also be wrong in thinking that Lo Ping Zhong was likely to be a citizen of China rather than Myanmar, but you'd still be more inclined to background check his company more than Stephen Law's.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ghaff 13y ago

My name is essentially unique. Neither first nor last are that rare but they're not that common either and of somewhat different ethnicities. (Someone else in the last century seemed to have the same name but they had no Internet footprint as far as I could tell.) Personally, I don't mind that if you pull up my name, you find me though YMMV. The really bad thing IMO would be having a fairly uncommon name and sharing it with someone notorious. You don't even need to get into Do-Not-Fly lists and the like. I had a classmate a long while back (pre-web) who lived in New York and he apparently shared his name with someone who got into a very public spat with George Steinbrenner. My classmate got all sorts of phone calls and even death threats.

dubfan 13y ago

That doesn't seem like an optimal solution. Ideally these lists should match against more data than just a name. Financial institutions seem to work this way. I share my name with a convicted Ponzi schemer currently sitting in federal prison, but I've never had a problem getting credit or opening bank accounts.

PeterisP 13y ago
Financial institutions match it against more data if that data is provided - if money is wired to "Stephen Law ID#1234" (simplifying), then it can be positively verified as being not the 'forbidden' Stephen Law, but if some item or money is sent to simply "Stephen Law" w/o any extra information, then it would be restricted, since the system is deny-by-default, of course.

altero 13y ago

My government allows me to have multiple passports, because of various problems with visa. I think I should also ask for multiple identities because of all this spying and anti-terrorists. BTW it costs a few hundred bugs to change name

dangayle 13y ago

Reminds me of little Bobby Tables: http://xkcd.com/327/ http://xkcd.com/327/

abvdasker 13y ago

Better yet, name your children after US politicians and bureaucrats. They'll probably be whitelisted for life.

drawkbox 13y ago

Easy solution, name new babies a v4 UUID.

sorahn 13y ago

I wonder if I can change my legal last name to a public bitcoin address...

cjg 13y ago
And then you lose the private key...

vacri 13y ago

it is time to consider naming your babies with names that are extremely unlikely to be common Apart from being overly paranoid, this is not really workable at a demographic level. Far easier, demographically, to just change your name in the rare event where this happens.

pbhjpbhj 13y ago

>May be a start-up idea for prospective parents to run the names and ensure that before they name their babies, those are not on some list. // I imagine just googling a name is pretty close to being a certain test for it's existence.

ZoFreX 13y ago

> Also, do these special lists really flag people just by their names? Yes. Yes they do. Welcome to the security theatre!

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

This is not a real solution. I mean its fun to talk about but not a solution.