zlacker

Yes it is an interesting set of trade offs. I have first-hand experience. Six years ago, people on one end of the political spectrum mistook me for someone on the opposite end, and doxxed me. My name is similar to theirs, but I have an additional part of my name that makes it more specific. Now, my google results are polluted with the residue of that doxxing event.

For a while, I actively tried to remove my google results, but there are still archive and social media sites that have my info up, despite my best attempts to take it down. There are also people’s personal sites that have my info, but I don’t want to contact them, because I doubt that these people would believe that this is a case of mistaken identity, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself all over again. I have family who had a similar thing happen, and they counseled me not to take legal action, since it would probably lead my harassers to double down.

So now I am trying to rebuild my actual, positive online presence, except for contact information, because I still fear for my physical safety all these years later. It is a delicate balance. The political situation here (US) is so unstable, the memory of the internet is so long, and developing technology (generative AI) is making it so that there might be a point in the future where a sufficiently motivated individual could exact political retribution on a whole set of perceived enemies at once. This would make my entire life a hellish experience (or end it), no matter the fact that I wasn’t an extremist. I feel that this makes my online presence as essential to my well-being as things like exercise, investing for retirement, etc.

>>rotexo+(OP)
Is this a situation where a legal name change might help, changing your last name like someone does getting married or divorced?

>>mikem1+gd
Yes, though as I understand it, that still leaves a public record. Also, I looked into it when I got married, and the sense that I got was that name changes for men are logistically challenging.

>>rotexo+6g
A lot of the "deep web" stuff is behind paywalls (like background investigation sites) now. But a number of years ago when some of them were still pretty open, I was pretty floored by how much information you could get on a person if they had an uncommon name and/or you knew just a little bit about them.

There is a lot of information that's public as a matter of law--which arguably, in many cases, hasn't reconciled that a lot of public information is no longer just stored in a file cabinet in some dusty county or town clerk's office.

>sense that I got was that name changes for men are logistically challenging.

To the degree that's true I assume that women changing their names when they get married (or divorced) has been such a norm for centuries that it doesn't invite scrutiny (although I've heard plenty of complaints about what a headache it can be in terms of various IT systems etc.) I assume when men do it, there might be at least a suspicion that something shady is going on.

>>ghaff+ak
There's tradition when a family has only daughters and the oldest daughter marries, her husband takes her family name.

>>Goblin+tt
Who's tradition? This sounds fascinating.

>>all2+FJ
While I can't speak for what specific tradition GP might have been thinking of, but it seems like a special case of what happens in systems where typically a bride marries "into" a groom's family, with the occasional exception where a groom marries into the bride's family for e.g. inheritance purposes. This is globally quite common in cultures where inheritance is relevant with male preference.