Under the same username everywhere?

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Do you stick to the same username all over the net? Some people are easy to be tracked down over there for they use the same username everywhere, wherever they go. I just googled the username of some person from imdb and she turned out to use the same username everywhere - on FF.net, linkedln, mylife etc. - everywhere. Do you do it as well? I don't, for I use several different names on the net (about at least seven or eight) but it would indeed be cool to be recognizable under just one username.

I have different variations of the name. Sometimes I'll use numbers or change the spelling a bit but it's roughly the same.

Yes. I have no reason to be anything other than one username. A good idea to regularly change passwords though.

I have been known as "The Bicycling Guitarist" since the early 1980s because I ride a bicycle no-hands while playing guitar at the same time. I've done this tens of thousands of miles, the past thirty years on the same bicycle, the past twenty years with the same guitar, writing hundreds of original songs.

I have been on the internet since 1995 and have had an official web site online since 1997. Mostly In the early days, but even now sometimes, I can't always fit "TheBicyclingGuitarist" into the number of characters allowed for user names, so I have to be creative. Depending on how many characters are allowed, I also use BicyclingGuitarist, BikeGuitarist, or TBG most frequently.

I post a lot to newspaper and blog articles about the social (not scientific) controversy over teaching evolution in public school science classrooms, as one of my special interests the past thirty years especially has been the study of evolution and marveling that a "controversy" can exist considering how overwhelming the evidence for evolution is. It's even more incredible today that some people are still so badly misinformed about this, now that we have so much genetic evidence and even more fossils than before, and the evidence was overwhelming a hundred fifty years ago. So if you search for "bicycling guitarist" +evolution in any search engine, especially using the "news" or "blogs" options to search, you will find rants of mine on this subject going back more than a decade.

I also post to several bicycle web sites as The Bicycling Guitarist, and my "Minstrel Cycle" has its own page on several web sites. The past few years I have introduced myself as "The Bicycling Guitarist" when people ask me my name, or TBG (pronounced tee-bee-gee) for short. A couple years ago I asked one of my sisters to make sure it is carved on my grave marker, so you could say my stage name is literally carved in stone!

I see on YouTube now there are several other bicycling guitarists, but I claim The Bicycling Guitarist as my trademark stage name and have defended it. A few years ago some studio musician in L.A. who bicycles to work carrying a guitar (not playing as he rides) posted a web site as "The Bicycling Guitarist." As soon as I found his web site (a couple weeks or less after he started it), I contacted him. He was kind enough to change his title to "The Bicycling Musician" but gave me a lesson in courtesy as my first email to him was more aggressive than I should have been. A young physics student does play guitar while riding and calls himself "The Bicycling Guitar Player" on Myspace. I contacted him too, and he will not change his title. As long as it isn't exactly the same as The Bicycling Guitarist I really can't complain.

I've used several variations of the same name in different places. And sometimes use other ones that strike my fancy at the moment. The one thing I never do is use my real name.

Using the same user name all over makes it easier for spies.

But an ordinary guy/gal has nothing to be afraid of - no one wants to make use of knowledge on them gathered by this person.

Don't be so sure. I acquired a real life stalker from online years ago, and there's nothing special about me.

I do try to do that. However, there are other people who use the exact same nick name also. Just because you found one Lienda Balla, doesn't mean you found me. I'm just saying.

Nope, I don't.

It takes only 33 bits to identify a person out of the global population.

Think of it like 20 questions. Out of over 6.6 billion people, asking a question which eliminates half of them is one bit of information. Asking another question which cuts the sample pool in half, is another bit. After between 32 and 33 such questions, you will be left with a single individual.

[Aspie aside: this is, incidentally, how to win at the game of 20 questions. By asking questions such that the other person is equally likely to answer yes or no, with each question you eliminate half the sample pool. Since 20 bits can identify one out of about one million objects, and most people are not that imaginative, you will win the game significantly faster than if you asked questions which did not minimaximally reduce the sample pool. Any bias in the questions is, all things being equal, as likely to communicate more or less information; the best strategy is to extract an equal number of bits from each query.]

It takes significantly less bits to identify a person out of a smaller pool than the global population. With, say the population of New York State being around 18 million, it should take under 25 bits to identify an individual.

Now consider if you know they are autistic, or interested in cars, or are named John. This fact can provide quite a lot of information. It may, for instance, cut the possible pool from 18 million to one million: it has then provided about 5 bits of information.

Now you find out they are on Website A. Only about 1,000 users on A are from New York State- this provides another 4 bits of information. Now you're 16 bits away from pinpointing them.

Out of a population of 1000 people, only ten differentiating things need to be known about a person to uniquely identify them.

I try to use different usernames on different sites so I'm less easy to identify.

I use the same nickname on different sites so you can recognise me but I also use other nicknames so I don't find myself being spotted elsewhere unless I feel the need to tell you.

I mostly use different usernames for different sites. My default username is my first name with some numbers behind it.

It would not, in my opinion, be "cool to be recognisable under just one username."

What if you're a member on one forum where you provide little disclosure of your private life, and another one where you pour your heart out about your most intimate problems?

People can look you up and find out stuff about you that you don't want them to know. I don't want them doing that to me.

And then there are the people who make up multiple fake online personas, and aren't who they are pretending to be.

What makes people think that everyone on here is who they say they are, or is disclosing all the nasty stuff they want to hide?

At first, I would've used the same username on different sites, but today, I find none of my usernames being the same, possibly because I didn't want to be found somewhere else (like here, as one example).

I can't imagine myself using the same username online on sites I will probably be at in the future, unless I really want to re-use one, or am not concerned with being found. I think that searching my usernames put me off using the same one, so yah.

Oh, and my avatars are usually different from each other, too.