Blinky the Shark wrote:
> cybercat wrote:
>
>>
>> "Little Malice" > wrote:
>>
>>> Wow. I'm really sorry about that, Charlotte. I witnessed one death
>>> threat to a friend 12 years ago and it scared me enough to stop
>>> using my legal last name. I can't imagine what you've been through.
>>> I feel sort of cowardly now...
>>
>> You're not cowardly, you're smart. They don't call it freaknet for
>> nothing. Happily, there are better anti-electronic stalking laws now
>> than there were 12 years ago.
>
> I, probably like most of us, sometimes encounter Usenet real-name
> bigots. I ended up devoting a page at Blinkynet to this:
>
> http://blinkynet.net/comp/nicks.html

Excellent page. I also like the comment about how your screen name came
about!

I too have had problems caused by using my real name on usenet. When I first
started posting to usenet I was in the RAF. I regularly used my real name on
a model railway group. A couple of the young lads on my squadron decided to
track the online activities of people that they knew and every morning used
to put printouts of people's postings up on the noriceboard at work. In one
incident I had cause to discipline one of my troops and he complained to the
Flight Sergeant along the lines of "He has a train set. How am I expected to
respect him?" I had an interview with the Flight Sergeant who explained
that railway modelling isn't really conducive to maintaining military
discipline and told me that I should abandon my hobby. I told him "Good luck
with enforcing that order".

Nevertheless, from that point on I started to use a screen name and have
done so ever since.

Incidentally, one of the lads who did the online tracking later got himself
into a lot of trouble. He hacked into a bank website (not really
maliciously, just because he *could* ). When caught, he ended up doing time
in a military prison.

--
Enzo

I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.