We could have done well with the information the web gave us but without the individual anonymity social media provides.
A little humor here - this is the first site where I made up an un-revealing 'where's Waldo'
screen name after several years posting in my own name on Fidonet and early Usenet - car forums for Trooper, Subaru, others. Forums for Novell Netware, early Ethernet and then WiFi, etc. Alt Folklore Computers and Alt Folklore Urban forums on Usenet in particular, where I think my comments on Y2K prep can still be found. All using my real name and plenty of context revealing where I lived and worked. Never a problem.
Until:
Someone invented a spammer program that harvested all of Usenet's users. Not just Posting Name but also the Reply To etc fields. It was first used to flood Usenet groups and make them unusable.
Then - My email - also my real name - suddenly received bounce messages from 10,000 different ISP's, "Recipient XXX not known here". The named recipient and the text "I" was claimed to have sent was different in every single message. Somebody had put my Reply To in their Viagra spam that was sent worldwide. With every field randomized using real data, to make filtering unusable.
I also got a few real replies mostly "take me off your list". Plus a couple of classics: "I hadn't told anyone about our problem, how did you find out?". Best was a woman in the public-facing tourism department of some Southern state who was outraged that 'her little problem' was now being giggled about, around her office.
Ok, time to recognize the age of Internet innocence had passed and it's time for others to rely solely on what I type to get their impression of me.
More recently, 'doxing', revealing names and addresses of grand jury members etc as well as online posters, is having real consequences. The guy who beat Pelosi's elderly husband wasn't there for a random burglary. Posting anonymously along with secure passwords for financial info and even home WiFi, are simply part of the modern world now.
