Hacker News Reader

Comment by ReactiveJelly | Hacker News Reader

> Posts from 13-year old me?

Right, this is why opsec is something that you must always be doing.

Anything you say can be preserved forever.

Better to use short-lived throwaway identities, and leave yourself the power of combining them later, than to start with one long-lived identity and find yourself unable to split it up.

It's inconvenient in real life that I'm expected to use my legal identity for everything. If I go to group therapy for an embarrassing personal problem, someone there can look me up because everyone is using real names. I don't like it.

View on HN

I agree. However most of us (understandibly) don't think this when we are 13.

If we created an identity that is completely different than our real identity when we're 13, great.

If not, that becomes a problem without an actual solution especially in the age of Internet archives.

But most people do create fake identities when they're 13, "BigMan69" may trash talk on reddit for 5 years, but then as the person behind it gets older and wiser they can create a new account. AI may suspect your are the same person as "WizzenedOwl19" who started posting shortly after BigMan69 stopped, but it's another hurdle and another layer of plausible deniability

It’s not always easy to migrate identities, especially if your identity has built up reputation or trust in a community.

Or if the identity is tied up with a marketplace that you bought your game library from.

We need not be lectured on a forum catered to the technologically-fluent person, about what the average layperson does throughout their tenure of online identity. Our actions don't match the ones they took, especially since the only platform that the youth today is incentivized to use fake identities are gaming platforms.

TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Google accounts, Snapchat, etc. are a different story.

I'm teaching it to my 10 year old. Also we don't allow our kids' teachers to post their photos online either. They are taught that privacy is precious and some essential "defense against dark arts".

I joke with them that if they googled my name (somewhat unique) you'd find 3-5 other people - none of whom look at all like me. Any hits I have are far far below the fold.

It's crazy that everyone is blaming OP when exactly what you describe affects most people in their 30s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com