More often than not, the best way to hide is to simply blend in with the crowds – this also encompasses one’s choice for a username. It is relatively simple to make a single throwaway account – just come up with a username, and off you go – however, if one makes throwaway accounts often, the task of thinking of a unique, and non-identifiable username can become a challenge. I would argue that poeple would often resort to using a pattern employing small changes for all subsequent usernames. Such patterns can be identified to a specific user if all users have their own unique patterns.

How can one reliably generate many unique-but-normal, and non-pattern-identifiable usernames?

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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    2 years ago

    Usernames are inherently pseudonymous, not anonymous. The distinction is often ignored, but it has a very big impact on privacy implications.

    I use either Bitwarden’s random username feature (randomly generated word + numbers) or (a hash of) some random data. You could also do it offline and use dice rolls to select a word from the dictionary. I don’t think humans are capable of being random enough when it comes to this stuff, at least not long term.