The End of Anonymity?

Apparently I'm up to no good.  Which might well be true, depending upon how you define 'good'.  However, this assessment has nothing to do with anything I can be proved to have done or written, it is simply because I don't use my own name online.  I don't know if you've noticed, but of late the whole concept of online anonymity has been under attack.  We've had the various web luminaries behind such sites as Facebook and Google proclaiming that it is a 'bad thing', that the only people who don't use their real identities online must have something to hide and, therefore, must be up to no good.  Indeed, social networks like Facebook and Google Plus practically insist that you use your real name, (although 'Doc Sleaze' apparently looks enough like a 'real' name for it to get past Facebook), not to mention actual photographs to identify yourself.  On top of all this, we're seeing more and more media stories about 'internet bullying', all emphasising that the perpetrators hide behind web anonymity, using online alter egos - the clear implication being that if people were forced to use only their own names online, then this cyber-bullying wouldn't happen.

Of course, it is all bollocks.  The likes of Facebook and Google have a clear agenda when it comes to ending web anonymity - data mining.  These corporate behemoths want to gather as much personal data about you as an individual as possible for the purposes of marketing and ad targeting.  To do that, they have to know for sure who you are.  They'll witter on about the need to personalise services and the like, but the real reason for this data collection is economic exploitation.  Which brings us to the other side of anonymity: privacy.  That's why most of us who use pseudonyms online do so - we wish to preserve our privacy.  I've outlined my own reasons for using an alter ego both here and on The Sleaze -  primarily because, in an age where employers and prospective employers do web searches to find information about employees, it would otherwise be pretty much impossible for me to write online satire.  In addition to those reasons, the fact is that I'm a very private person - I don't want people tracking me down online.  Thanks to my refusal to use my own name in any public online activities, various former school mates and acquaintances have been unable to track me down - they can't seem to grasp the fact that I didn't keep in touch with them for a reason: I didn't like them!  But even if my reasons for remaining anonymous are perfectly innocent, the anti-anonymity brigade will still point the accusing finger at the internet bullies.  The problem with this argument is that cyber-bullies are generally also bullies in real life, where their lack of anonymity doesn't seem to deter them.  Moreover, it usually isn't that difficult to identify them online - they generally aren't smart enough to cover their tracks.  So, beware these people calling for the end of web anonymity - they're clearly up to no good.