I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?
I know that when I see some of the ridiculous names ans fake email
addresses that some use I have my doubts about the questions being
serious and / or genuine.
David @ a breezy end to Swansea Bay

There was a time when we used to joke that usenet had the same 100 posters, all posting to different subsets of groups. Basically, it took a bit of technical nous to get on to usenet in the first place. We had newsgroup meets and met people in real life, and, with very few exceptions, most people proved to be OK.

Nowadays, 98% of he population is on-line, search engines have improved out of all recognition, and it it is really easy to look up someone's name and find out their complete history. I certainly don't tell my different groups of friends everything about myself - I'm not going to start making my whole life visible to complete strangers on the internet.

Remember too that employers nowadays will do internet researches on potential employees. There are things you do in your leisure time that you might not be happy about revealing to your employer.

I doubt whether the proportion of undesirables in any higher, but with a much greater number of people posting, the absolute number of undesirables is greater than it was. And every extra undesirable who manages to pick up real-life information about you just makes life that little bit more complicated. And there are certainly urglers who have met people on urg who have turned up in real life and made things difficult.

On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?
I know that when I see some of the ridiculous names ans fake email
addresses that some use I have my doubts about the questions being
serious and / or genuine.
David @ a breezy end to Swansea Bay

I've always used an invalid email address when posting to this
*newsgroup*. (Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

I stopped using my "real" name years ago as John is simply too common.
I now use what was my school nickname, a pronunciation of my initials
J and K and I have explained this here before now.

And, of course, having never met my "oppo" at the other end of the
Bay, I don't *know* that David Hill is his real name. Must dash to
check that I am, in fact, who I think I am.

--
Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling from the East end of Swansea Bay where it's May
and I'm worried about minus zero temperaturess forecast

On 2013-05-09 10:26:02 +0100, Jake said:

On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?
I know that when I see some of the ridiculous names ans fake email
addresses that some use I have my doubts about the questions being
serious and / or genuine.
David @ a breezy end to Swansea Bay

I've always used an invalid email address when posting to this
*newsgroup*. (Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

I stopped using my "real" name years ago as John is simply too common.
I now use what was my school nickname, a pronunciation of my initials
J and K and I have explained this here before now.

And, of course, having never met my "oppo" at the other end of the
Bay, I don't *know* that David Hill is his real name. Must dash to
check that I am, in fact, who I think I am.

Lol! Well, having met him several times, I promise you David Hill is
'real'! I was warned NOT to use my real name on newsgroups when I
started, so I used the name of one of my dogs. Then I met or talked
privately to several members of urg and felt silly using a pseudonym so
posted using my real name. It isn't what I was christened but it is
what everyone calls me and has done for decades. I don't use my
address because I don't want spam or advertising and I prefer to choose
who I'm in email contact with!
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk

On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?
I know that when I see some of the ridiculous names ans fake email
addresses that some use I have my doubts about the questions being
serious and / or genuine.
David @ a breezy end to Swansea Bay

Your choice, feel free to ignore those you don't want to read. That's
the beauty of Usenet.

On 10/05/2013 21:49, Jeßus wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?
I know that when I see some of the ridiculous names ans fake email
addresses that some use I have my doubts about the questions being
serious and / or genuine.
David @ a breezy end to Swansea Bay

Your choice, feel free to ignore those you don't want to read. That's
the beauty of Usenet.

Thanks for the permission.
But you don't always know they're crap till you have read them

On Fri, 10 May 2013 22:01:35 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

On 10/05/2013 21:49, Jeßus wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?
I know that when I see some of the ridiculous names ans fake email
addresses that some use I have my doubts about the questions being
serious and / or genuine.
David @ a breezy end to Swansea Bay

Your choice, feel free to ignore those you don't want to read. That's
the beauty of Usenet.

Thanks for the permission.

OK. You're a dickhead. Duly noted.

But you don't always know they're crap till you have read them

Perhaps you could complain to the government and they'll fix it all
good for you. Or stick to Faecebook in future (no permission
required).

--
I wanna go like my grandfather... in his sleep. Not like the screaming passengers in his car!

That is a reason for not broadcasting your email address, not a reason for concealing your name.

On 08/05/2013 23:15, Martin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?

SPAM

Or more insidiously the damage that the great Swenfest of 2003 did.

My inbound email clogged up with 1GB/day of hostile binaries for the
best part of a week which is why I now use a cunningly designed but
perfectly valid provided that you make no changes reply-to address.

Bots just cannot resist removing "spam" from it and some scripts were
crashed by the "|" pipe character appearing where and how it does.

I have always posted under my own name and in the early innocent days
with my normal email address (which is long gone but still attracts bulk
spam as do partial msgids of Usenet posts I made decades ago).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

"Martin" wrote

Martin Brown

, Martin wrote:
David Hill wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their
real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?

SPAM

Or more insidiously the damage that the great Swenfest of 2003 did.

My inbound email clogged up with 1GB/day of hostile binaries for the
best part of a week which is why I now use a cunningly designed but
perfectly valid provided that you make no changes reply-to address.

Bots just cannot resist removing "spam" from it and some scripts were
crashed by the "|" pipe character appearing where and how it does.

I have always posted under my own name and in the early innocent days
with my normal email address (which is long gone but still attracts bulk
spam as do partial msgids of Usenet posts I made decades ago).

I used my full e-mail address when I first started using newsgroups.
My ISP has changed hands many times. The current owner has made all
old versions of my e-mail address invalid. As a result I get almost no
spam.

I have always used my real name on Usenet but mangled my e-mail address, on
other forums I use an old alias because of the seeminly increased number of
nutters there.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

On 09/05/2013 08:57, Martin wrote:
On Thu, 09 May 2013 08:24:10 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 08/05/2013 23:15, Martin wrote:
On Wed, 08 May 2013 20:30:53 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

I seem to remember a time when posters to this site would use their real
names, but now it seems that so many posters do all they can to hide
themselves.
What are they afraid off?

SPAM

Or more insidiously the damage that the great Swenfest of 2003 did.

My inbound email clogged up with 1GB/day of hostile binaries for the
best part of a week which is why I now use a cunningly designed but
perfectly valid provided that you make no changes reply-to address.

Bots just cannot resist removing "spam" from it and some scripts were
crashed by the "|" pipe character appearing where and how it does.

I have always posted under my own name and in the early innocent days
with my normal email address (which is long gone but still attracts bulk
spam as do partial msgids of Usenet posts I made decades ago).

I used my full e-mail address when I first started using newsgroups.
My ISP has changed hands many times. The current owner has made all
old versions of my e-mail address invalid. As a result I get almost no
spam.

Like all Demon subscribers I get everything that is sent to my domain
@n.d.c.u after their spam filters have tried their best. My historical
profile on Usenet and elsewhere means I get a fair sample of bulk UCE
even with their best effort filtering. The newest phishing attacks are
getting increasingly sophisticated and some are almost identical to
genuine emails apart from having the wrong personal salutation.

I was for a while (about 5 years) also @pandora.be when I lived there.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Thu, 09 May 2013 09:57:27 +0200, Martin wrote:

I used my full e-mail address when I first started using newsgroups. My
ISP has changed hands many times. The current owner has made all old
versions of my e-mail address invalid. As a result I get almost no spam.

Yes, same here. But I use the same email after all these years, and like
the other Martin I get tons of spam, mostly from the days when I wasn't
careful.

I think many old timers use their real names as at one time netiquette
had it as rude not to.



--
Gardening in Lower Normandy