

How Unique and Traceable are Usernames? - adulau
http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.5578

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BoppreH
My username is, AFAIK, unique. Being able to recognize the same person can be
extremely useful if you build things on different places.

I think the trick is detaching it from your real life. If you are using the
same username, don't list your address or add your IRL friends.

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pavel_lishin
Doesn't work as well when your username is firstname_lastname.

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cosgroveb
I made a conscious decision to use my real name online. I do hope that I am
never harassed IRL due to my opinions online or provoke the wrath of someone
like Anonymous, however...

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solipsist
From the _Discussion_ section:

    
    
      This work shows that it is clearly possible to tie digital
      identities together and, most likely, to real identities in
      many cases only using ubiquitous usernames. We also showed
      that, even though users are free to change their usernames
      at will, they do not do it frequently and, when they do, it
      is in a predictable way. Our technique might then be used as
      an additional tool when investigating online crime. It is
      however also subject to abuse and could result in breaches
      in privacy. Advertisers could automatically build online
      profiles of users with high accuracy and minimum effort,
      without the consent of the users involved.
    

From the _Conclusion_ section:

    
    
      We extend this technique to cope with profiles that are linked
      but have different usernames and tie our problem to the well
      known problem of record linkage. All the methods we tried have
      high precision in linking username couples that belong to the
      same users.
      
      Ultimately we show a new class of profiling techniques that can
      be exploited to link together and abuse the public information
      stored on online social networks and web services in general.

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synnik
My username was 100% unique from 1991, when I first started using it, until
some time around 2005. (At least according to veronica, then altavista, and
now google.)

In the last 5 years, enough other people have picked it up that the only
front-page Google search that is actually me is the HN link.

Draw what conclusions you will, but I think that as more of the world's
population gets online, the uniqueness of the name alone is going to be more
and more questionable. But tie it to a domain/site/location, and then you have
something.

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hollerith
I picked a user name whose entropy is high enough that probably no one else
will pick it on any site, and I often choose to reuse it on new sites
expressly so that I can be traced across sites. (My HN user name predates this
choice of user name.)

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epochwolf
I did the same thing. My name was unique 3 years ago and still is from what
I've been able to tell.

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coolgeek
I've found people on facebook and freenet using mine... and stealing somebody
else's name is definitely not cool

