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Subject: Re: Anonymous accounts policy

Author: Vincent Vega

Date: 18:56:23 07/01/00

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On July 01, 2000 at 06:50:29, Jeroen van Dorp wrote:

>All "fights" with words are fights in semantics.
>As non-native English speaker I should take extra care of my words.
>But anonymity is really something else than privacy.
>
>Privacy is very well possible without being anonymous.
>With me it happens every day. People know my name, people know where I live, but
>they don't know what I do at home, or what my plans are.
>
>That's the privacy you also deserve on Internet.
>
>You know (or are able to know) my full name, the country and town I live in, my
>provider, my e-mail address.
>No one has the right to use them without my consent, or use them without my
>knowledge- that's privacy.

You're wrong.  Policy on the use of your private data varies country by country
and the web is worldwide.

>
>Anonymity on Internet is walking around everywhere, participating anywhere,
>without people being able to know who you are. There should be nothing wrong
>with that.
>
>But the reason for *my* post and *my* point of view is because we know where
>anonymity on Internet leads to: trolling via anonymous mail- and newsservers,
>ultra bad behaviour, anonymous perstering of other people online.
>Too bad these are the facts. We're talking Internet, not the physical world.
>
>For me that experience means that people who want to communicate with each other
>on the Internet should be known to each other.
>It is standard procedure in *my* every day's life: meeting people is introducing
>myself.

When you meet somebody in the real life, you reveal your identity just to him,
when you post a message here, you give your idenity to the whole world to use
forever.

>
>Gone anonymity.
>But stay privacy.
>
>Jeroen ;-}

I disagree.  Being forced to use your real name with every post is a bad policy
- there are too many potential problems for the posters.  Problems with trolling
etc. have to be solved by the people running the board and they would have
access to the real names anyway.  Are you ready to reveal your name to every web
site you visit?  If not, why do you want people to be forced to do so here?  If
you want your real name to be known, nothing prevents you from signing your
posts.

Anonymity is very useful when people have something to contribute yet don't want
their identities to be known.  U.S. founders like Thomas Paine, Alexander
Hamilton, and Samuel Adams have all used pseudonyms.  Concerns of the people
writing on this board may be smaller but they are still important to them.  Many
people recognize that, in fact here is story from yesterday about the
development of a new Web anonymity system -
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-2183852.html?tag=st.ne.1002.thed.ni



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