[vidarh]

The difference, for me at least, is effort.

There's a vast difference from if people can do a search for your name, and get page up and page down of stuff from every forum you might post on, vs. if people need to track down your nym's.

In my case, my HN id is trivially easy to connect to my full name, but unless you go to the effort, these comments won't show up.

My Reddit comments are still easy to connect to my full name if you try, but it does not reflect my name directly, and it will take more searches for most people. I don't care if people who know me figure it out - I've e.g. often made clear statements that identify me in comments there, by e.g. replying in threads when posts from my blog has been posted there. I don't care if the odd person here and there make the connection, with or without my help.

I don't care if people who care enough to put effort into figuring out the connections figure it out (though I'd find it rather creepy if someone thought that worthwhile) - they'd find other avenues to get information about me anyway.

But I do somewhat care that off-hand comments I make that are more like a casual chat than a serious debate or public statement does not end up ranking at the top of a Google search for my name.

I "curate" my online life that way, by deciding what I post and what usernames I use, depending on how much or little I care about tying a specific service to my public identity.

[icebraining]

But you can only do that because HN, Reddit and other sites - unlike Facebook and Google+ - allow you to create that chasm between the two identities.

There's nothing wrong with an individual choosing to use his legal name in his profile, but we should be weary of making that decision for others. Personally, I won't join any service that maintains such policy.

[vidarh]

Absolutely. I may join such services, but I will self-censor. I hardly use Facebook, for example, because I don't want all those personal details spread to a lot of people I care less about that many people I only know by handles, but feel social pressure to add. So my profile exist, but is pretty much devoid of content, and it will remain that way.

[millennia]

At some point of course, people are going to start using data analysis of all your posts and even writing style to build up an entire history of you from all these public posts, this will happen, indeed it's already happening precisely because it is so valuable. So your curation of your online life is really the illusion of control, in fact the culture of google, like that of Facebook, leads me to believe these things will appear at the top of a google search as you fear at some point in your lifetime.