What's your identity worth to you?
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I've been meaning to go into this for a while now, but I'm interested in seeing how important privacy is for MU*'ers. More specifically - and you can add your own questions to this list - I was curious about how protective you are of:
- Your real world identity - meaning anything past your first name, including your general geographical location (city, State, etc). Please remember if you e-mail or share documents using your e-mail accounts those often include that name!
- This is a subset of the above but I wanted to isolate it... what about your gender, family status, religion, etc? That is, stuff about your social status.
- Your 'physical' digintal footprint; for example sharing pictures of yourself, but also even being on a voicechat with others; do you only do it with trusted few or go on general channels?
- Your e-mail address or other online traces of your identity outside of gaming.
- Your identity on games - are you at all concerned about people figuring out your alts, or who you play on other games, including non-MU*? What about the room you are in, or who you are RPing with?
Part of this has to do with MSB in particular, since lately we've taken tentative steps to alter the new account registration process in order to address certain issues we've had in the recent past, but I want to see how you guys treat these issues and how important they are to you.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I don't exactly advertise myself, but I'm also not afraid of it, either.
Being an author, I know my identity is out there. However, I've balanced it outside of games. I have my "public persona." There's that which you can Google. My pen name, as you will, is part of my real name. I keep it active, I keep it polished, and you can't get more than my city/State off of it. You can't get intimate details, my home address, etc etc.
But once I'm ready to approach agents to try to get published, I need to be able to go 'here, I have the groundwork done for a fanbase for marketing' and I'm working on that. I've got my active Twitter account, my author page on FB, etc.
However, I have enough of a background in IT that it's easier for me to juggle multiple accounts on platforms, I guess? Or maybe I just have fewer fucks to give in general. I dunno.
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I like to keep my identity unknown. It was probably brow beaten into me since early online days from having a few
scaryfucked up interactions with people online.I keep quite a few email addresses with faux names when ever I'm asked to provide one. I'm very much a 'Pay no attention to the man/woman/he/she/it behind the curtain". Let's just RP.
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I am willing to accept that Facebook and Google know things about me that I don't know in exchange for the services rendered, but I'm also going to do what I can and is reasonable to make this harder for them (AdBlock Plus, Ghostify, etc.)
I am paranoid that my hobby is going to make it harder for me to find a job in my field, but honestly don't know anything more that I can do about it than keep my real world name and my online name separate as much as I can at this point.
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It's okay when I share it myself. It's not okay when others do (whether for their own use or telling to others). All else is questions about whether the painting is oil or watercolor.
ES
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I dislike people knowing what characters I'm playing because people RP with me dramatically differently when they know it's me behind the keys. I want sincere interactions in RP, not people being nice to me IC because they like me oocly. If I can create meaningful scenes that people get excited about, I want it to be on the basis of my RP alone.
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I'm more protective the other way around. I have patients who can be quite... interested in my personal life. Friending me on facebook, following my twitter, etc. I tend to have decoy accounts for them.
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@arkandel said in What's your identity worth to you?:
- Your real world identity - meaning anything past your first name, including your general geographical location (city, State, etc). Please remember if you e-mail or share documents using your e-mail accounts those often include that name!
I'm pretty free with my general geographic location. Like, I live in MA outside of Boston and I'll say as such. When I used to live in NYC, I said that, too.
I have a separate Google account with my online alias that I tend to use for documents to share with folks on games that don't know my real name, because my name is very distinctive and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the world with my first name + last name combo. But there are also people I've played with I've shared my name with.
- This is a subset of the above but I wanted to isolate it... what about your gender, family status, religion, etc? That is, stuff about your social status.
I'm pretty free with that. I play a lot of male PCs, but I inevitably indicate fairly freely that I'm a woman IRL. And other social status stuff I'm generally fairly open about, including what I do for a living.
- Your 'physical' digintal footprint; for example sharing pictures of yourself, but also even being on a voicechat with others; do you only do it with trusted few or go on general channels?
I don't tend to share pics of myself publicly on games, but I'll share stuff with more trusted friends. I'm not concerned about my voice.
- Your e-mail address or other online traces of your identity outside of gaming.
I guess there are a few gamerunners who know my email! I don't generally give it out to others, though.
- Your identity on games - are you at all concerned about people figuring out your alts, or who you play on other games, including non-MU*? What about the room you are in, or who you are RPing with?
I sometimes try to keep an alt quiet just to explore without folks being predisposed in some way. I'm not concerned with people knowing who I play on other games, which is why I've got a posted playlist.
I might be concerned with people seeing who I'm RPing with under very specific circumstances (like doing secret stuff on a game where stuff is also OOCly secret), but not in general.
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I don't worry about the general area that I live, the fact that I am male, the fact that I'm married, the fact that I have a daughter, or who my alts are. Some of that is male privilege though -- I expect that if I were female, I would be a lot more careful about most of that.
I'll also share details of my past professional life. Some of that could be used (if someone wanted to) to get my name, but I don't generally give that out except to people who I've known for a good long while, or folks that I've met iRL. In keeping with that, I don't generally give out my email, but I'll share it now and then with folks that I've spoken with and who seem reasonable (generally only for sharing files/logs/systems/whatever).
I don't tend to voicechat, just because I'm not particularly interested in it, and I generally only share photos if I'm planning to meet with the person.
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I don't even answer threads like this. That's how secretive I am.
I also use a headset that makes me sound like a Thenomain, by which I mean a robot. It should sound like T-Pain, but whatever.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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I use either a separate gaming specific address or a burner sharklasers.com address for some games and just about anything else that doesn't need my actual identity tied to it in some way. I don't have any social media accounts so don't worry about those.
I am pretty free with my geographic location in terms of State and with vague professional career in IT related fields.
I don't mind sharing who my alts are usually, but so long as I am the one doing the sharing. It's why I wish the profile piece of Ares was opt-in on sharing.
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<janet>Not a robot.</janet>
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@seraphim73 said in What's your identity worth to you?:
my past professional life. Some of that could be used (if someone wanted to) to get my name,
Wayne Gretzky - I knew it!
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- Not very protective. I've been around on games for 20 years; if people want to find me, they will.
- I don't give a damn who knows that.
- I don't do voicechat, but that's only because my voice is ridiculous compared to the characters I tend to play, and it would break some people's suspension of disbelief (those who have met me IRL can chime in on that, haha). I think... two? people on Arx have seen a picture of me IRL in the context of chat about my recent trip to Vietnam, and three others know me on Facebook through other games.
- Don't care. I'll give you my NY bar license number if you want; I'll tell you where I teach college. I'm an oversharer -- but, and this is an important point, I don't expect others to be. It's just how I'm wired.
- Considering my last alt (2 years ago) got figured out by two people who knew him today, this is pretty hilarious as a question, considering timing. I have had +watch/hide on a little more frequently recently, but that's more because I've been feeling big-scene-swamped and would prefer 1-on-1s or 2-on-1s at the moment, and the culture on Arx is to jut walk right in. I don't play MMORPGs or the like (one and a half hands; gaming consoles are not my friends), so that part of it is irrelevant.
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I have not always protected myself well, but the MU community at large does not often inspire confidence in potential camraderie, and often when it does, you pay for engaging it anyway. Distance and time are my only weapons left and anyone begrudged and dedicated enough could easily put pieces together to harm me, if they really wanted That said, I haven't managed to keep from setting my hand on the stove burner for too long. Mostly because there are charming and intelligent people who just draw me in. It's entirely my own fault for coming back every time. I'm sure this is not a unique experience. As for the rest, I have no use for demographics or identity information and as such I don't volunteer it beyond the most obvious bits. As such, friends come and go from my life. I wish them well unless I don't.
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I'm more closed-mouthed on games than I am here, mostly because there are more spaces here for discussing random life things in specific. Game OOC room/channel convos tend to focus on the same subjects, but there's usually one conversation going on at any given time and unlike here. There's no real picking and choosing, so, for example, 'I'm not interested in video games, so I'm not going to read that thread' works here, if people are talking video games, that's usually the only topic option, so I won't be engaging with it. Here, there's usually something worth chatting about in another thread if not that one, so more information is likely to come out, because there are a variety of spaces where it's possible for it to come up on a consistent basis.
Even beyond that, as MSB is in the 'WORA chain', even if it's different in tone, and this is a group I have generally engaged with for almost two decades now, even if some names come and go. I have not been on any game that long, but if I had, I'm relatively sure plenty of folks on said game would know just as much as y'all do.
I'm in the same position with @Roz re: my first name is middling rare and my last name is fairly rare*, and I'm probably the only person on earth with my full name.
I'm more closed-mouthed on games about it, unless I develop a friendship with someone.
Random things, even if they're fairly personal, are not a huge deal if they aren't identifiable:
"I'm bi" <-- no big deal; a list of women I've been involved with, no (for the 'other people's privacy' reason even more than mine, frankly).
"My RL address is so weird and nebulous-sounding people think it's fake and the post office messes it up all the time" <-- no big deal, what that address is (even if it would verify that assertion and be worth a laugh?), no.
And so on.- Though not as rare in certain regions than one would think, for instance there's a pile of us in my area so much that I constantly get asked if I'm related to X and I don't even know because other than my parents specifically, everybody seemingly bred like rabbits in their generation as well. My grandfather had eleven siblings in his family, and they all came here and settled in this area... and all of them but him tended to have PILES of kids. Oodles of us in a roughly 100 mile radius.
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My policy is simple: total and complete online and real life separation. This isn't just about Mushing, but everything online. I don't mind people knowing who my alts are, or my online presence such as emails and forum identities; I don't even mind sharing things like gender, family status, religion and geographic location as long as they are non-specific.
But I don't do real name. I don't do RL pictures (with a handful of exceptions). No voicechats. No social media/Facebook/Twitter/Skype. No connections that allow people online to identify me in Real Life.
Geez, the only things online that contain any of my RL information are eBay and Paypal, and those already make me squirm uncomfortably.
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@arkandel said in What's your identity worth to you?:
Part of this has to do with MSB in particular, since lately we've taken tentative steps to alter the new account registration process in order to address certain issues we've had in the recent past, but I want to see how you guys treat these issues and how important they are to you.
There is nothing you can ask for from us that we can't easily fake, unless you're asking for a mailing address or phone number in which case you're going to lose a lot of people.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
Most of my MU friends have me on Skype or Discord. I talk about myself and my life, some folks have even seen my face, or even met me in Real Life. I love voice chat, especially when I'm doing staff things. Some of my best friends in the world I have met online.
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@arkandel I'm just leery about #5. I don't want anyone to know that I'm Jill.
