I enjoy participating on these forums as you learn much and also have an opportunity to share. What I dislike is communicating with a moniker. What is wrong with folks using their names? I do and would never think of hiding beyond a moniker. Perhaps I'm missing something.
HZ
Howard. At one time I did use my name similar to you, on another forum. At that time I lived in another state and mentioned that I ordered trains from a well known mail order / online place in that forum. I walked into a hobby shop and the hobby shop owner criticized me for buying from that mail order place rather than more stuff from him, who was much more expensive. He had read my comments and was shoving them down my throat. And at that time I had gone through a couple of layoffs and a divorce and was living on a very limited budget, and honestly I didn't appreciate being stalked by the LHS owner on train forums. Sometimes being anonymous has it's uses as I learned at that time.
I'm kind of old school and what with everyone airing their lives publically on social media - often to a fault - it can have adverse effects. We have seen example in the news during the past year where comments people made on social media got them fired from their jobs. I know this isn't Face Book or twitter but the general principle is there where there can be negative consequences. Keeping a low profile isn't always a bad thing. Of course it depends on how you behave - but as I illustrated earlier, even if you do seemingly innocent things like shop trains from a discount vendor and mention it on a forum, it can have negative consequences. My LHS refused to sell consignment items for me, which almost always sold and I used the proceeds to buy stuff at his shop. When you are going through hard times, you have to be frugal. But I got blackballed for consignment selling because I identified myself by name, and I mentioned I ordered from a discount vendor.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Howard,
it´s not only your friendly neighborhood fellow model railroader reading this (or any other forum you may participate in), but also folks who may not always have good intentions. After all you disclose a heck of personal information over the time in your posts.
"Hiding" behind a moniker may save you from getting unwanted visitors leaving your premises with that prized brass articulated, or maybe even worse.
Hello Howard,
Yes I'm completely with you.
Could understand monikers on some " special site or even site which could give you bad returns" but on a trains forum; as far as I'm concerned never had any troubles after more than 750 post.....can't really understand.
Marc
I prefer anonymity on the Internet. I don't know who is on the other side and prudence suggests caution. I don't reveal everything about myself to strangers.
NittanyLion I prefer anonymity on the Internet. I don't know who is on the other side and prudence suggests caution. I don't reveal everything about myself to strangers.
So do I.
Howard,I use my first name in my signature and have since I started forums in 2001. I don't see the harm of using one's first name in their signature line.
I fully understand the news media has everybody looking under their bed and in their closet for the boogieman but,I'm not that paranoid yet.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Think of usernames are more like the "pen names" that authors use. It not only gives you a minor hint of privacy, but also allows you to be who you are and not just the tag you are given. My username has been the same pretty much everywhere on the internet since the days of Prodigy and Compuserve. It is as much me as my real name.
I have used my first name pretty much since I started on the forums in 2006. I have posted my last name on occassion but I figure that most conversations here are on a first name basis so I don't see the need to use my last name all the time. Its not like I'm expecting anyone to call me Mr. Warnica. If you do I'll wonder what you are up to!
Dave Warnica
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Me LION. (ROAR)
Me also in charge of internet security for my company.
Keeping bad guys out is a matter of giving them as little information as possible. KEEP YOUR REAL ID SECRET.
If I know your name, I can go to your facebook page.
If I can go to your facebook page I can discover every thing from your hat size to your gender preference (and more). This is all ready made fuel for a phishing attack pointed directly at you.
Keep your real ID secret. That is why we have Private IM here instead of email addresses.
On my websites our e-mail addres is NEVER published. You get a form to fill out and that is forwarded to me by a blind 3rd party provider.
That said, EVERYBODY on here *knows* who the Broadway LION is, where he lives, and what he does. I trust most of these people, but at least a simple webbot cannot scan my name or ID. A deep hack, yeah, I can be hacked. You gotta balance your priorities in life.
But then we spend over $1300 a year on internet security here. and as far as that goes we are still pretty much wide open. We got guys here who pay no attention to internet security. I have enough to do to keep out ISS and MX servers locked down, and I really need to do more to protect our database applications.
I am migrating to 25 character random generated passwords. Drives people crazy, but they would be even more unhappy if the system went down.
Yes, it is far better to use a forum name. Probably a different name with each forum. I sure would not want everybody here to know about the other forums that I am on. ;)
Click on my website link below, and you will know all about me.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
I've been using my real name on the internet since 1996 (back in the old rec.models.railroad days). I've never been bothered by it because I try to live by the simple internet creeds of "Say what you mean; mean what you say" and "Would you say that in person?" Some of the best, most hilarious posts I've ever created were ones I never actually posted. I can be a sarcastic pot-stirrer of the first order in my head, and I pound the keyboard to spell it all out. Then I go back and read it. Then I snip out the really bad things I wrote, and then I post the rest or delete the whole thing. I've never been banned or been given a timeout from any internet forum, and in all my thousands of posts, just a handful have been locked or deleted.
I'm not that worried about my identity online or people finding what I say. My Facebook account is set to "Private" so only my friends can see anything more than my picture and name. And my FB friends are my actual friends in real life. I'm not in the phone book and never have been. I'm registered to various websites like this one through free e-mail accounts (never my home account) that I don't care much about.
About the only thing that's interesting with regards to this is when I'm at train shows. I've had total strangers talk to me about something I've said online (and not in a bad way), which is kind of flattering. And the manufacturers seem to recognize my name at Springfield, so there's that.
So Paul3 I am and Paul3 I will remain...
Paul A. Cutler III
I'm a world famous entertainer, and don't wish to have my real name divulged. I just want to be "one of the guys".
Modeling the Baltimore waterfront in HO scale
Folks,
Privacy today has gone the way of the phone booth. Unless you dwell in a cabin somewhere in northern Maine with no electricity, you'll be found on the net and with so many other high tech vehicles available to just about everyone. I refuse to live with paranoia about some bad guys breaking in and taking my choo choos.
Besides anytime we travel, there is always at least someone staying in the house...often more. Then there is security system, attack cats, and soon..another big ugly mean dog.
I'm **** proud of my name and will always use it in business or whatever.
I have been into politics and had to make the experience that something I wrote in a small model railroading forum was held against me, despite being a completely non-politicalk statement. For the same reason, I don´t do Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other social media other than this and three other model railroading forums I frequently post in.
Sorry, guys, I have nothing against my first name being public in a forum, but my full name will only be disclosed to people I want to know it.
Well I too have always signed my first name (well actually it's my middle name, but it was I go by) on internet forums.
I run a business, and am reasonably well known in my community, and have been around the hobby community here in the Mid Atlantic my whole life.
I would not be hard to find. My house has been on TV (and on here), my name has been in the newspaper(remember those?).
If you google GRAVELY TRACTOR you will find a picture or two of my tractor among the images.
Like it or not, it is all out there, and I'm not even on facebook or insta whatever.
I respect the views of those who wish to be anonymous, unless they use that cover to be inappropriate, then that speaks volumes.......
I'm surely not paranoid, but sometimes cautious.
Sheldon
Back when I signed on to this and other boards 10 or more years ago, my name was appearing professionally in other posted and published material. The nom de web was adopted to keep the two areas separate. On the other hand, I've used the GL identity consistently and don't use multiple identities, like a couple of people.
Once upon a time when computers were a new thing they could only create files with 8 characters. Because of this people couldn’t use their full name. One of the user names I go by in gaming is Slayer X because I only had to change two characters from the default name, Player 1. On arcade games where you enter your initials for a high score I use BAD because it's easy to change to it from AAA. When the internet came around it was mostly computer geeks who were used to going by user names. A lot of the internet was dark web and people didn’t want their identity revealed for various reasons ranging from identity theft to the fact they were sharing software or media files, or were members of adult sites, or just for their own personal privacy and protection. In my case, on this website I used the name of my model railroad because it was a statement of what I model. I wouldn’t say that I am a world famous entertainer but I’m in a band that has fans thought out the USA. And of course I have haters too and get plenty of hate mail and even threats. I was also a DJ at a true pirate radio station where I never used my real name on the air. Besides, if I wrote my real name you couldn't pronounce it anyway.
I signed up to the forum in 2008 with the moniker because that was the choice at the time out of caution and as a play on words.
I'm frugal, and it was how my dear old grandmother used to spell my name. She used to bake a lot.
There is no point in not using my first name, as if it wasn't already guessed by many.
-Douglas
- Douglas
I agree that privacy is hard, probably impossible to maintain. But not using my full name and not being on social media like facebook, I at least make it a little harder for someone to misuse my information against me. Frankly, given the way employers/prospective employers, loan companies, insurance companies, retail companies, etc. are constantly datamining us for their purposes not too mention companies that offer it as a service for hire, we all should work to limit what we give out.
Paul
I use what is close enough to my real name. My employer assigned me an employee number (CU190), in 1990, and that is how I have been known ever since.
.
Around the company, we rarely use real names.
"Hi, I am CU190, nice to meet you, I am GK266 and this is AF187."
"Does anyone know where MM176 is, I need to know why he altered this quote?"
You get the idea.
So, SeeYou190 is kind of my real name, or might as well be.
The program we use most often at work is also why I put periods in between all of my paragraphs. The stupid old mainframe program requires this, and now I just do it all the time. It is better than messing up at work.
-Kevin (name my mother gave me)
Living the dream.
Some interesting arguements/discussions. I can see the reasons for the annominity is some cases. I just wish I could have been the fellow who walked into the hobby shop with the proprietor giving him grief for not buying from him. Folks, the best bargaining power in the world are your feet as they are quite capable of doing a 180 degree turn with the least amount of effort.
Personal Security. You have to be cautious on the inter-net, phone and such. Too many thiefs lerking around, wanting to steal you identity, Social Security Number, Bank Account Numbers and so forth.
I'm not hiding any corrupt activity, by using a pen name to post, being alert to criminal activities is my reason. Ask anyone in law enforcement.
I spent most of my career doing classified work, and we were always warned about the dangers of being tracked on the Internet. We were told to avoid Facebook and the like, and not to even tell people where we worked. Personally, I found Facebook to be annoying, so I didn't use it.
A friend gave me the nickname "Beasley" in middle school, and it stuck with me ever since. By the time I got to college it was as much my name as my real name, and to this day there are guys in hockey who don't even know my name isn't "Beasley." I've got a hockey jersey with "Beasley" on the back.
So, "Mister Beasley" became my screen name. I'm not hiding anything, but at the same time I'm protecting what little privacy I have in this electronic age.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Sorry, had to see if I had a moniker....
Edit: Nope
Randy
I am also world famous!
Just kidding, I'm only famous at home. Maybe that's infamous.
Anyway, I think I might be a bit paranoid of creeps in the rest of the world. If we were all in the same club and met face to face, I'd tell you tedtedderson probably isn't what my parents named me.
T e d
With bots and data miners, phishing, hacking (they're going after email accounts and bank accounts [fellow I sing with has two adult kids, one in the IT industry...both their bank accounts were hacked recently), and ransomware so common and crafty these days, I think some kind of barrier is prudent. There's always PM's if one wants to get a little more informal or friendly.
Mark is my actual first name and I live in south east Texas but that's all of the personal information that you'll ever get out of me...
Jumijo I'm a world famous entertainer, and don't wish to have my real name divulged. I just want to be "one of the guys".
Your identity is safe with me, Elvis ...
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I am just a private person, and I like flying under the radar. This also lets people know what my favorite railroad and locomotive are.