dovebikerFull Member
If you could be bothered to trawl through my old posts, it would take about 10 minutes to track me down as I live in a small village known to many and work in the oldest, well-known shop here.
The hardware shop?
Then there is a solid chance I was unwittingly chatting to you last month when I was up buying some bits an bobs!
I've made myself a bit too obvious to identify in the past and rolled back a bit in the last few years. Mainly because having my social media posts identifiable at work, especially when political would not be ideal with some of my 'client group' at work. A couple of times users have put two and two together and worked out who I am but have been good enough to not put enough extra keywords in a post to make the thread appear if you Google the real me.
I'd say if (geez, it better be when) I change career I'd care less. Having said that I won't post on a Facebook group with totally open settings simply because I really don't want real life friends and relatives reading me bickering about packrafts and the merits of different fat bike routes in their feed. I do like a bit life life separation it seems.
I am quite a inconspicuous looking bloke. So I find it quite easy to be anonymous.
A couple of times users have put two and two together
You are George Osbourne and I claim my £5!
If you've put two and two together and got five, you're probably George Osbourne.
My first foray(1990s) into an online 'community' was on a site called Active Worlds,a bit like an early Minecraft.
You got an avatar shape that you could use to visit different sections and 'chat' (in text) to other avatars that you would meet.
Most of the other people were Americans as a lot of them seemed to get free Internet access (dial up).
At the time I was working at a University,so the connection/rendering speed was good,and it was all a bit of fun at lunchtimes.
Being a bit new to all this I left my ICQ messenger contact details linked to my Avatar profile.
Some of the random nasty stuff send from crazy Americans was off the scale,from those early days, I knew there was no way I wanted any of my real life details ever getting into the hands of people like that. Tried to stay (mostly) anonymous ever since,especially on any public forums.
Ah, ICQ. That would've been 1998.
I am probably not too anonymous, more so now my employer have asked for staff’s social media details. I hold back from some commenting because I don’t want to be on a disciplinary, I suspect there’s a few on here in a similar position
I'm not anonymous at all. I've never met another Ambrose (my real name) and have had an online presence for many years. I'll be easy to find. Knowing this I try hard not to post anything at all inflammatory. I deliberately stay clear of the political debates.
my employer have asked for staff’s social media details.
Wait, what?
I hope you answered in the style of Malcolm Tucker. The **** business of theirs is your personal life?
Yeh, that response would definitely have you ****ed up and on a charge of some sort.
My name is Kelvin. I’m open about the work I do, and where I live, when contributing to this forum (and in the distant past the magazine).
I’m anonymous enough. Only been recognised in public twice. And Tbf, it was the bike that was recognised, not me.
To all the other MTBers called Tom Howard (there’s a few, if various FB marketplace is to believed), I’m sorry.
I keep my professional life and social life pretty far appart, but in the bikey world of niche tat and singlespeeds a lot of folks know me and my mug shot has been in mtb magazines around the globe, so if anyone is arsed to track down a beardy heavily tattooed ****, its pretty easy 🤣
I'm very amorous, you feeling lucky?
Everything I post is generated by AI.
I used to be djaustin till the great bike theft. Then I switched to TiRed. I’m not bothered about anonymity, but then I think about what I want to post. If you’re interested, I’m here… I also follow my company policy on social media, here is no different. I treat you all as I would in person. And have met some of you face to face.
Yeh, that response would definitely have you **** up and on a charge of some sort.
What sort of charge?
Unless there are atypical security / safeguarding issues, if your employer wants to read your public Facebook feed they can go find it. Did you share your STW profile details also?
Madness.
If you’re interested, I’m here…
OBE? Christ.
I've followed you, anyway. For no real reason.
I post on LinkedIn occasionally. Geeky science stuff. I don’t post on social media, other than here, but have accounts on Twitter and Facebook (Insta for the nephews and nieces). Henry the dog has an Instagram page though.
I read the title as 'How enormous are you?'.
How anonymous am I?
You tell me?
Don't think I've made enough impact for anyone to gas!
I knew TiRed was/had an OBE and had been considerably more than "quite clever" about Covid stuff. That's an impressive set of skills. I suspect he's going to get an interesting cross section of profile views this week!
I've never really thought this place suffered badly from being behind pseudonyms. There's a few on here who I know in real life and I think we mostly know the others' forum personas by accident not design but we don't interact much/at all on here - save it for the pub. Pretty sure where I've posted a photo it'll identity me via Flickr or some such.
Love this place quite a few superstars. Couple of years ago one of our cycling buddies had a incident and it turned out the the quiet lady in our group was a retired heart surgeon of some note.
<hr />
I've posted enough here for folk to get within a mile of my place. But there are a LOT of houses there.
Previous life and real name scattered around here too.
Best of luck trying to find images of me. Lots in print but all pre social media and the rise of the Internet.
I don't think my user name is that anonymous.
I'd rather not know the real identities of STW users as I have my own humourous mental images of people.
There's a boat near me called Cougar. I see MCTD as Scrooge McDuck, you get the idea.
I think the hospital has my medical records tagged under both my real and forum name.
I’m not that bothered. I realised in the 90s that I have an almost unique name and I would always be easy to find in the digital world. My personal social media rules are ‘would I say it in person?’ and apart from on here I use my real name (Beate Kubitz). I just didn’t think of doing that when I signed up so I borrowed my dog’s name. She was way nicer than me anyway.
Much like everyone else, I imagine I would be easy to track down. And also vice versa (real name to online name). When I started joining forums having a username was the done thing, before facebook etc popularised real names. My username should now be whitespoke.
Not in the slightest. Photos of myself, Flickr links and just shared a screenshot of a Strava ride with my full name showing.
I'm sure there'll be some on here who know me in real life other than the (currently) one that I know of, but they haven't shown themselves yet 🤣
[i]I’m sure there’ll be some on here who know me in real life [/i]
I know who you are.
I know where you live.
I really wish you would tidy your wardrobe.
Best of luck trying to find images of me. Lots in print but all pre social media and the rise of the Internet.
I distinctly remember you posting an image of yourself, after starting a thread following some sort of injury, there were several comments claiming that you looked like I can't remember who.
Based on that I could definitely pick you out in an identity parade!
A little OT but I saw someone posted on FB anonymously they other day with some ad or other and "please DM me for details"
the use of usermames is a bit of a thowback really - the forum is older than 'social media' / Web 2.0 and predates the notion of most people having some sort of public profile online for either work or social purposes. (plenty of nerds would but your mum wouldn't)
On forums like this your identity doesnt really matter.- we're a bunch of voices contributing to a common topic and it's pretty much irrelevant who any of us actually are. Its sort of the opposite of a something like Facebook - here we're a bunch of mostly strangers who have one thing in common, Facebook is mostly a bunch of people you know...other than that, have nothing in common. The convention of forums of this vintage has always been to contribute under a nickname probably for no real reason other than real names are in relatively short supply - people would generally already have had to create some sort of avatar for their hotmail or AOL account because it turned out there were already hundreds or people with the same name as them already registered so using a nickname of some sort so was the common convention when setting up any kind of internet account.
I can post frequently and freely and candidly on here because theres a fair chance people reading anything will be broadly interested. I rarely post anything of substance on Facebook becuase theres not really anything that I want to address to an audience that includes work colleagues past and present, friends, neighbours and aunties and cousins.
But I think a big difference between here and a lot of other public platforms though is in many other cases your history is deletable - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so on - you can edit and delete any and all of your history if you ever wanted to - the opportunity exists to make a fresh start. Forums like this just couldn't function that way so you contributions to them will be around indefinitely.
OBE? Christ.
Impressive CV - who knew we had the actual son of God posting here. How's your dad?
I’ve posted enough here for folk to get within a mile of my place. But there are a LOT of houses there.
Just need to find the boat house?
Previous life and real name scattered around here too.
Ah, so you have a book deal.
Best of luck trying to find images of me. Lots in print but all pre social media and the rise of the Internet.
You sure about that?
I’d rather not know the real identities of STW users as I have my own humourous mental images of people.
No idea what you mean 🤔
Not very anonymous but only give out very small bits of actual important information. I don't discuss life, wife, problems, money, politics etc. Just bikey stuff.
usermames is a bit of a thowback really
The only thing I would say to that is that certainly within my professional/social circle there's a bit of a revival of a wish for anonymity online. I know a good number of teachers that have changed their Facebook and other social media profiles to something other than their real name, especially if their role has anything pastoral or 'management' in it. Basically because of the abuse they were getting from both children and parents. It appears trolling, and some pretty career ending false accusations (generating fake accounts using just enough detail and images ripped out of people's real accounts for authenticity and then laced with specific supposed posts with enough nuance and local knowledge to be a just a bot doing the faking) is a bit of a mass participation sport for some. Maybe the consequences for the perpetrators are insufficient, maybe people got bored and lost their shit during COVID and the habits stuck but it's very not cool. It doesn't help that people are crap at using the tools built in to FB etc to make sure total randoms can't see pictures of your kids etc (one teacher I know left her details open and had pictures of her daughter from FB printed and stuck about the school with messages about her looking like a whore,; another had photos of his wife posted about under the title "ugliest woman in the UK - who'd want to **** that? All charming stuff).
Unless there are atypical security / safeguarding issues, if your employer wants to read your public Facebook feed they can go find it
It is included as a vetting matter. Post various police WhatsApp and social media outrages, criminal convictions and rapes parts of the civil service have gone full on policing social media activity. One’s private conversations, let alone posting online are all their business apparently.
Do they monitor my SM posting, I suspect not, would they look through them if i was in the poo and they need extra grist; no doubt.
Thanks for reminding me Ernie, luckily that image was deleted from Flickr ages ago.
… if your employer wants to read your public Facebook feed they can go find it
And find it they will. Some levels of security clearance require access to you personal life.
I probably shouldn’t even say that much online, but …well they wouldn’t find this … er, yeah, they could actually, if needed!
It is included as a vetting matter. Post various police WhatsApp and social media outrages, criminal convictions and rapes parts of the civil service have gone full on policing social media activity. One’s private conversations, let alone posting online are all their business apparently.
Do they monitor my SM posting, I suspect not, would they look through them if i was in the poo and they need extra grist; no doubt.
...
And find it they will. Some levels of security clearance require access to you personal life.
Sure. As I said, if there are safeguarding issues &c then it's a different scenario. If you're an electrician then not so much.
It's kinda pointless anyway. It'd be the work of moments to create a second account and say "here you go."
I realised in the 90s that I have an almost unique name and I would always be easy to find in the digital world.
Same, though googling me will hit a lot of false positives. It's like being named Dave Bricklayer.
When I started joining forums having a username was the done thing
Exactly why I chose an alias, there was a requirement for a unique monicker and my first name or my initials no longer cut it. As it turned out, "Cougar" isn't all that unique on the global Internet either but it served me well for a while. I've never encountered another Cougar in the wild but I've had plenty of "that username is taken," I think I have an arch-nemesis somewhere in the US who goes around signing up to things and then never using them.
the use of usermames is a bit of a thowback really – the forum is older than ‘social media’ / Web 2.0 and predates the notion of most people having some sort of public profile online for either work or social purposes.
I'd carbon-date "Cougar" to circa 1990 give or take a year.
Surprisingly, I am not the real Hans Rey. But I did win a signed poster of his from stw.
That's all you're getting from me.
I am not the real Hans Rey
Thanks for shattering the illusion! I wonder what his username is?
