What's your identity worth to you?

Apos

@surreality said in What's your identity worth to you?:

@Nemesis @Apos Not sure why you directed any of that at me, since (neither of) you addressed anything whatsoever that I said.

I edited Nemesis' quote to remove a mountain of vulgarity and insults, and said, 'ftfy' to him, as in 'fixed that for you', which is a meme sometimes used for things like that. Nemesis then edited his post to reflect it, which might be confusing.

Nemesis

@nemesis said in What's your identity worth to you?:

In fact he's probably lost a lot more than 2 with the proliferation of IPv6 in major metropolitan areas (which is pretty much the entire US Eastern seaboard)... unless he sprang for the $120 router upgrade that he argued with me about after I told him that's all he needed.

@surreality said in What's your identity worth to you?:

Someone making demands is behaving inappropriately, especially if it entails the person you're demanding something of investing a significant amount of time or money in order to meet your demands for the sake of meeting your demands.

The fact that you take what I said (quoted at top) and twist it into what you claim I said (quoted just below that) is all anyone ever needs to read from you. The fact that you contribute nothing but disinformation with explicit support for other posters of disinformation is my problem.

Arkandel

@nemesis Please stop the he-said she-said. Basically everyone stop.

Either talk about identity theft on the internet or don't talk here. I won't ask again.

surreality

@Apos Yeah, got that, but I'm not arguing tech whatsoever, or tossing out any tech citations, so I'm not sure why it's directed at me is all. I have never claimed tech expertise and am the first to say I don't have any.

If people are providing information or services, they should only be doing so in the manner in which they are comfortable doing so. If that means not playing somewhere that requires an email, it applies; if that means not allowing connections of some kind, it applies. That basic principle doesn't seem complicated to me at all.

surreality

This is worth linking here, too, as it's relevant to this discussion as well. In this case, using an ip-fetch image setup on a forum to potentially identify posters and link them with game accounts.

<sarcasm>...because that can't and won't go horribly wrong in a hundred ways, no, never.</sarcasm>

(Thanks to @RnMissionRun for linking that in the Armageddon thread.)

Quinn

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!

INCREDIBLY. And I was not always very good at this. It is very, very easy to forget that the people you might talk to every day on the internet are strangers. That what you post on the internet is forever and that shit can come back to haunt you. I was on a forum for a decade or more that was targeted by gamergators. They basically came after mainly women posters who had "ideas" about video games/gaming. This lead to people's families being threatened, people seriously doxxing them to find their home address and telephone number, and a few people had some of their posts where they talked about work sent to their workplaces.

Since that's happened I try very hard not to give out very identifiable information online just in general. @Ghost raised some excellent, excellent points that your average person just does not think about when it comes to how much of your information is getting out there. If you are not watching yourself, you should. I've been around since usenet/IRC days when people would joke about axe murderers, but I still went to plenty of meetups, traded pictures with people, gave my phone number out, and way, way over shared. And we were all super assholes back then, but no one I knew (or knew of) would go to the extent of trying to hunt down someone's real life home address to send them threats or trying to get them fired because they had an opinion they disagreed 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.

It fucking sucks to be a woman on the internet. When I am going somewhere new, I pick a handle that would be hard to pin a gender on. Most people will automatically assume you're a guy if you're talking about video games or gaming. You don't get the rape threats until they figure out you're a woman.

There are a select few MUSHers that I am Facebook friends with, some of which I've "known" since I was 15. They're good people. I'd say the vast majority of MUSHers are nice people. But one crazy fucker that has you talking to your boss about potential RL blowback because you thought there were issues with representation in something can really sober you up quickly to the realities of how dangerous sharing online can be. And it can be really, really hard not to share. I'm a very social person. I want to talk about how cute my kids are. I want everyone to know how great they are!

But see how easy that is? Okay, now you know I'm a parent. I've got more than one kid. So, if you wanted to start stalking me and trying to figure out who I was, that's a nice clue to have.

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 do it anymore, but I DID do it a lot back when I was a teenager/early 20s. Now my shit is locked down and I do not share stuff like that with strangers i.e. anyone not on my very short Facebook friends list.

Your e-mail address or other online traces of your identity outside of gaming.

I have so many damn email accounts, all for different aspects of my life.

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 took a seven year break from MUSHing so I'd be pretty impressed if anyone could figure out who I was. I often got lumped into whatever nonsense @TheOnceler was up to, regardless of whether or not I was aware/contributing to it, so that's the only thing I even slightly worry about. It is very frustrating to always be treated like an extension of your partner/spouse/roommate/whatever, but it happens just about everywhere on the internet when a pair of people are posting/playing. And MUSHers have looooong memories. So I don't advertise that I'm me where I'm playing or talk about past games until I've established myself. And then the conversation always goes like this:

Me: I'm so and so and played here.
Them: Ooooh I remember you! I hated you then!
Me: Yeah, we all took things very seriously back then didn't we.
Them: Haha, yeah, god we were stupid kids. Want to RP?

Fin.

Otherwise, I don't care if people know who my alts are, where I am, or who I'm RPing with. If I'm on a game, I'll RP with anyone and everyone from the guy people think is problematic to the most popular kid in the room.

tldr: If you are not being careful online YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL! If you are being careful, BE MORE CAREFUL! It is god damn terrifying to have someone you don't know and don't even remember having a conversation with sending you a personal email that's not associated with a forum and start saying how they could really fuck things up for you if X learned about this post you made ten years ago.

Haven

Damnit, I miss all the thread drama.

Someone just quickly tell me who I hate so I can get up to speed.

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Nemesis

@Haven How'd you know Bugs Bunny was my CB handle as a kid? Have you been pixelling my IP Address?

dontpanda

@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!

Most people don't know my name. I have a Gmail address I use for stuff like this, and use the hangouts feature for chat with other players.
I have no problem with people knowing I'm from Winnipeg.

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 don't disguise my gender, nor my marital status, nor that I have kids. I might have told people the general field in which I work.

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 do voicechat because I don't have the hardware and don't care to get it.
Ain't nobody wanting pictures of my gargoylesque appearance either. So, I don't share it.

Your e-mail address or other online traces of your identity outside of gaming.

My throwaway email generally. Maybe 3 people in my entire mu* history have had my real one.

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?

Not really. I did a playlist, after all.