[Karawebnetwork]

I do the same. In my case, it's doxxing prevention. I don't like that someone can put my profile on one of the reddit inspector sites and get a detailed profile of me, including my age, where I live and my hobbies. I also don't like it when people can click on my name and get my entire history across all subreddits.

That's not the case here because I consider HN to be the equivalent of a single Subreddit, so the information is less diverse. I don't talk about every facet of my life here.

On the other hand, I'm the kind of person who uses a different username on every forum. It's a habit I picked up in the early days of the internet.

This is especially useful in this era where even news organization websites will quote your online username to add to their stories.

[bunga-bunga]

Why don’t you just use throwaways? I stopped reusing usernames online long long ago.

[Maximus9000]

The trouble with throw away accounts is that there is technology to link the accounts by comparing your writing style to other accounts. Hacker news had a good demonstration of that awhile back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016

[Karawebnetwork]

Some might call me paranoid, but I also change my writing style between sensitive accounts.

Not all, because that would be a bother, but between accounts where I'm a moderator and those where I'm a normal user, I make sure to change my mindset.

On some accounts, I translate everything I write twice for greater anonymity.

[Cpoll]

> On some accounts, I translate everything I write twice for greater anonymity.

Beware, in some cases uncommon or unique anonymization techniques may make you _easier_ to de-anonymize.

[Llamamoe]

Easier to pinpoint as unique, sure, but de-anonymize? How?

[Cpoll]

I probably should have just said "cross-reference," but here's a hand-wavy scenario. The gist is, the more information you have on a persona, the more you can filter out identity candidates.

So, for example, if you have unique anonymous accounts for multiple online communities but use an identifiable "anonymization" scheme (and with the right heuristics and AI "magic" this need not be a targeted attack), I can correlate and build a profile on you: Military history enthusiast, knife owner, lives in Maine, Boston U alumni, class of 2001, active hours imply working 9-5, age 39, etc.

Which is probably enough to compare against public records, leaked data, whatever, to pinpoint a single individual.

[seanw444]

Perhaps it is paranoid, but you're not alone.

[bawis]

How exactly do you do that ?

[orev]

That would apply equally to using different usernames on each site, so not really relevant to the point being made here.

[hunter2_]

I see that implementation now says "Site is closed as of 2023-03-01". Do we know of any alternatives? Ideally I'd like to see if my HN handle brings up my reddit handle, or other cross-site linkages.

[saltminer]

Lots of subreddits have minimum account age and/or karma requirements due to how bad the bot situation has gotten, so unless you're willing to farm karma and wait a month to post each time (or maintain multiple semi-permanent "burner" accounts, which, as pointed out by Maximus9000, can still be linked together by writing style), it's easier to just purge your comment history on a regular basis.