Is Anonymity Really Necessary?

I suspect I know the answer to this already, but I've always been interested so thought I'd ask the question.

Many problems encountered in SL and across the web in general are caused by this apparent desperation for anonymity.

I often wonder why we feel we need it.

Would you join a virtual environment which demanded RL identities to be used?

If not why not?

What do you think the advantages and disadvantages would be?

I have no preconceived view really. I think I know the reasoning on both sides of the fence, but would like to see if there are any I haven't considered.

If it's not something work-related, personal info should be opt-in. Why? Easy answer: Stalkers.

For work related stuff, it's up to the company. Like, if my company bought a presence in SL and asked me to work there, my RL name would probably end up in the profile.

plenty of problems are caused throughout the web by a lack of anonymity also.

It would be kind of cool if it we were able to display a verified real life identity on our profile. Strictly opt-in though.

A virtual community where real life idenity was required?
Not only NO!!!! But HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess you have never had a stalker? Well I gave a trusted "virtual" friend my RL name and picture once a long time ago. He shared that information with someone and that someone "fell in love" with me.. The emails started, then the phone calls, then the following me.. Three restraining orders and a near death experiance (for him) and it was finally over.. Well until he gets out of prison anyway..

Sooooo.. No thank you very much!!!

I might join such a virtual world, but only as a means of communication.

I think that anonymity is essential to fantasy and roleplay, and those are two of SL's biggest attractions. Not to everyone, I know, but to many. Your proposed world would lose that whole crowd. It would also, IMO, lose a lot of the magic of SL. It would be more of a MySpace or Facebook with avatars, instead of the unique place that SL is.

Hi Meade,

Thanks for responding.

That argument has always interested me.

In RL our identity and personal information is out in the public domain for the most part anyway.

We interact with people every day, give our name, sometimes our address. Given a very small amount of information and a straightforward internet search we can normally pick up name, address, perhaps even date of birth and spouse/partner details of anyone we want.

As yet, when I meet someone and say "hello my name is John Smith", I rarely get the response "Sorry I prefer not to divulge my name in case of stalkers".

Personally I think it would be a great thing if everyone had to be accountable for their actions. Clearly some bad things can happen as a result of not being anonymous, like the previously mentioned stalking, identity theft, and whatnot, but I think such things are no more common than, say, muggings in real life. No one seems to suggest that no one should ever have to leave their houses and go out on the street as a result. I think people's fear of bad things happening to them as a result of using real information online is rather irrationally exaggerated compared to real world risks that everyone takes for granted. (No offense to those who've had bad things happen to them online).

The reason I've heard most often in RL about putting information on any site for any reason is: Some might stalk me! The second was a concern about identity theft.

Never mind the fact that the information is already out there or that anyone who really wants to do either can do so via non-internet means too. The internet is just more convenient for doing it.

*shrugs* Me, I'm connected to my main and alt accounts with Linden Labs. I've even given the state I'm in here on the forums. Do I want my RL name posted here? No. First off, I don't LIKE my first name and second off, yeah, I don't wanna make it easier for people

For me - anonymity = good

Identity theft = bad

Wouldn't your real information readily available online actually help the identity thieves you mention?


RL information disclosure should depend on the REASON, it shouldn't be a requirement to log into the net, or use a social site.

Regardless of what I see on my screen, I know absolutely ZIP about the person at the other keyboard. It is a matter of trust for me. Once I have known someone for long enough and have interacted with them enough, then and only then do I give more than just generalities about myself.

"Your World, Your Imagination" - what more needs to be said? Use SL as you wish and let the rest of us do the same.

Would I join a virtual world where RL information is required to be revealed in world? No a snowballs chance in he**!

You mean when you meet somebody in RL?

The big difference there is that you can see the other person in RL.. If, say, somebody came up to you in RL, looking like Charlie Manson, foaming at the mouth a bit, wearing a pink tutu and an "NRA Lifetime Member" t-shirt on and asked your name, would you give it to them? Problem with the internet is that you don't get the RL cues that let you make decisions on how to respond..

/me changes her answer slightly to say that I wouldn't mind being anonymous to other people in the virtual world but having a single RL identity registered with the people who run the world, assuming their protection against identity theft was reasonable.

Of course, just as being out on the street would help the muggers. That doesn't mean you have a high probability of getting mugged. Statistically speaking, the chances of that are vanishingly small. You have at least as much chance of being injured in a car accident as you do of having your identity stolen, yet people don't hesistate to use their cars every day. We all accept risks every single day of our lives. Why people perceive internet risks as somehow "riskier" is a mystery to me.

I have, it's called LinkedIn, and it can be really irritating

We're approaching the time where companies can have virtual worlds as part of their intranet, and obviously in that context everyone will have their real identity, with cyberextruder avatars etc..

For recreational worlds like SL, I'm amazed that some don't see the benefit of anonymity. Floored, really. One of SL's prime benefits is that it enables people to lose their baggage.

So a 75 year old granny can experience being young and beautiful again, shopping for clothes as a pleasure. A person who cannot walk in RL can dance without people looking at his/her profile and pitying them. Quentin Tarantino can work on new story ideas (what a place to do that!) without people coming up to him and begging to be in his films. I can play with building without having friends and coworkers, who know that I have no artistic talent, point and laugh and show me their gorgeous things. I can explore things that my friends don't know I may be interested without having to answer any questions about that group in my profile. A housewife/ househusband can quietly explore starting a business in SL before daring to do it in RL.

Anonymity is key.

Thanks for all your views so far.

Concensus of opinion so far seems to be fear of "identity theft", and the possibility of harrassment.

Perhaps I'm just playing devil's advocate, but by giving your real name and your address either of those risks are as likely in RL as SL anyway.

Part of me thinks these are simply badly constructed smokescreens for the real reasons we all like to be incognito in SL.

I understand the comment about RP and even the whole "virtual relationship" aspect. Which I guess would certainly be restricted if there was the potential for your boss or wife to see you in all your Gorean glory

Is that really all SL is though? A place we can go and live out the more embarrassing of our dreams.

Part of me thinks that SL would be a much nicer, more honest, less drama ridden place to spend time if we all had to live with the consequences of our actions.

What do you say to that..?

This is very true, but an online environment seems to make it very easy for people prone to stalker behavior to do so, with less chance of repercussions. (Can't send my big brother over there to beat them up!)

Perhaps it's not always a matter of showing up at your house uninvited, but constant emails, showing up where you are online, sending IMs demanding what you're doing and why you're not doing it with them, is also a form of stalking. Perhaps not actionable, but annoying.

So, it's a different name for me, no giving out real email addresses (I set up a separate gmail account for this AV, to transfer files when needed.) Nothing that ties my RL to SL.

We're approaching the time where companies can have virtual worlds as part of their intranet, and obviously in that context everyone will have their real identity, with cyberextruder avatars etc..

But SL is recreational. One of SL's prime benefits is that it enables people to lose their baggage.

So a 75 year old granny can experience being young and beautiful again, shopping for clothes as a pleasure. A person who cannot walk in RL can dance without people looking at his/her profile and pitying them. Quentin Tarantino can work on new story ideas (what a place to do that!) without people coming up to him and begging to be in his films. I can play with building without having friends and coworkers, who know that I have no artistic talent, point and laugh and show me their gorgeous things. I can explore things that my friends don't know I may be interested without having to answer any questions about that group in my profile. A housewife/ househusband can quietly explore starting a business in SL before daring to do it in RL.

Anonymity is key.

Yes, it is necessary. In fact, removing anonymnity would destroy SL for many, many people.

If I wanted to interact only as my RL self, I'd go join MySpace or some other RL chatroom. Or I would just go hang out in a RL bar, or at furry cons, or other social venue. A large part of what makes SL fun, for many of us, is the ability to BE anything or anyone that we can imagine. I'm not here to get a real life date. I'm here, primarily, to create a wide range of characters and places and to craft intricately detailed fictional encounters in them. If we had to have our RL name, voice and appearance plastered to our avatar, I would never have bothered looking twice at SL, and neither would most of the people that I know in SL.

Remove annonymnity, and you destroy roleplaying. Imagine how "entertaining" a movie like "Lord of the Rings" would be, if all the actors were prohibited from wearing makeup or using anything but their native accent and language, and their legal given names. Forcing roleplayers to remove anonymnity is forcing them to strip away all the carefully crafted illusions that breathe life into the variety of characters that they may be capable of representing. That is one of the main reasons that the roleplayers in SL detest Voice Chat. Because the linking of their RL voice to all their various characters shatters the illusion that the character is anything other than that one RL person.

Remove Anonymnity, and virtually all the social interactions that aren't aimed at some day turning into a RL meet-up or date go away. The 'fringe' communities that do BDSM, Gor, many furries, and those who participate freely in other alternative activities in SL would all go elsewhere. So would virtually all avatars that are experimenting with what it might be like to be the opposite gender. Being anonymous makes it safe to do something in SL that you might never dream of in RL. People that want to use SL as a way to get a RL date would like the anonymnity being removed, I suppose. But many more would lose what makes SL atractive to them.

On the flip side of the coin, ACCOUNTABILITY does need to be improved, by ensuring that the service provider, Linden Lab, can positively link all accounts to the RL person creating them. As the provider of the service, and as the sole entity capable of deciding who can and can not access this service, Linden Lab needs to be able to act consistently when a Player abuses their access to SL. That doesn't mean that it becomes a mater of public record for which Players own which accounts. But it does mean that at the very least, Linden Lab should be able to ban a given individual and make it stick for longer than the 3 minutes it takes to whip up a fresh unverified alt for free. And preferably Players in-world should be able to ban a troublemaker, and be assured that their ban will also lock out all of that person's alts, now and in the future.

I don't have a huge problem with giving RL info out to people i trust. certainly not my name. But Im obviously not gonna go giving out my address and home phone number, date of birth blah blah blah. That is asking for trouble. I have had problems before with unwanted phone calls while I am at work and my mum is having problems with fraud. so i do try to be careful.
But I do try to be Claire Silverspar in Sl and *me* in RL. There is a bit of cross over obviously because afterall Claire Silverspar is an extension of the real Claire. Considering me trying to keep it separate i prolly shouldn't have used my RL first name as my SL first name lol.
Yes I would join a group where RL identities were used - depending on the amount of info needed.

This is precisely why I use my real name on internet forums. It's not like I'm bothered about others using pseudonyms, but I do want to know RL stuff about people I interact with regularly.

I've long been a little annoyed with myself for not using my real first name for my SL name. It just seemed like, what with the restricted choices of last name, the system was setup for fake names.

ADDITION: Incidentally, while I am pretty open about my name, my fiancee certainly isn't. For example, she often uses a fake name when ordering food for delivery. In other words, some people already are tight-lipped about their identity in RL, so keep that in mind.

I'm not sure I understand this line of reasoning, Ceera. All movies have credits and we see the names of the actors. That doesn't preclude them from acting out their roles and it doesn't have a negative impact on our suspension of disbelief while enjoying the movie. Why would it destroy roleplaying? It's not like you don't know you're roleplaying with people who are likely someone very different in real life. Am I right to think it's rooted in people not wanting anyone to know that they roleplay? Is that perhaps caused by some weird socialized notion that it's somehow unseemly for adults to play "let's pretend"?

1. Not particularly. I do use my real identity elsewhere on the web, and like being able to be separate from that.

2. Advantages: People "own" their real identities a bit more than those in here, and are likely to be more cautious about what they say or do. Disadvantageous: harder to roleplay alternate characters. Inability to "escape" RL identities or situations

Some of us like anonymity - it's as simple as that.

If you don't care about anonymity - that's cool too.

Stop poking us anonymous folk with sticks

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I think anonymity has lead to an appalling downturn in basic manners. People say things anonymously that they wouldn't dream of saying directly to someone's face.

But more importantly, work and personal life need to be kept separate. There are stories all over the place of bosses finding Facebook or MySpace pages of employees or of HR people doing searches on applicants and finding things that cause huge problems for that person. Once you put your RL identity out there on the web, you can't ever escape it again and it is always there for someone determined to dig up dirt.