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How Your Username May Betray You

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the you-are-a-number-not-a-name dept.

An anonymous reader writes "By creating a distinctive username—and reusing it on multiple websites—you may be giving online marketers and scammers a simple way to track you. Four researchers from the French National Institute of Computer Science (INRIA) studied over 10 million usernames—collected from public Google profiles, eBay accounts, and several other sources. They found that about half of the usernames used on one site could be linked to another online profile, potentially allowing marketers and scammers to build a more complex picture the users."

3 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. No Shit by lordandmaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, that's almost precisely why I've the same username all over place (amusingly, almost except /.) - so that people who know me on one might recognise me on another.

    I'd imagine that anyone with a desire to not let anyone know where else they go on the net already gets all their usernames out of pwgen or something.

  2. Ummm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hey slashdot, why don't you be ahead of the curve on this and let posters change their username associated with their comments once every few years. Also, being able to delete an occasional comment would be thoughtful too. It's not 1995 anymore on both accounts.

  3. Identifiers may be used to identify you! by kwerle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Could we just move tautologies to idle? Or maybe we need a /. section called duh...