Pseudonym
Pseudonyms are "part-time" names, used only in certain contexts: to provide a more clear-cut separation between one's private and professional lives, to showcase or enhance a particular persona, or to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists' tags, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre, computer hackers' handles, and other online identities for services such as social media, online gaming, and internet forums.
The precise degree of this unmasking ability and its ultimate potential is uncertain, but the privacy risks are expected to grow with improved analytic techniques and text corpora.
[11] Businesspersons of ethnic minorities in some parts of the world are sometimes advised by an employer to use a pseudonym that is common or acceptable in that area when conducting business, to overcome racial or religious bias.
English usage also includes the French-language phrase nom de plume (which in French literally means "pen name").
In ancient literature it was common to write in the name of a famous person, not for concealment or with any intention of deceit; in the New Testament, the second letter of Peter is probably such.
A more modern example is all of The Federalist Papers, which were signed by Publius, a pseudonym representing the trio of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.
The Brontë sisters used pen names for their early work, so as not to reveal their gender (see below) and so that local residents would not suspect that the books related to people of their neighbourhood.
[17] A few examples are Brindle Chase, Peter O'Donnell (as Madeline Brent), Christopher Wood (as Penny Sutton and Rosie Dixon), and Hugh C. Rae (as Jessica Sterling).
Some famous examples of that include Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, and Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell).
The British mathematician Charles Dodgson wrote fantasy novels as Lewis Carroll and mathematical treatises under his own name.
[18] Some pen names have been used for long periods, even decades, without the author's true identity being discovered, as with Elena Ferrante and Torsten Krol.
Rowling also published the Cormoran Strike series of detective novels including The Cuckoo's Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
[20][21] A pen name may be used specifically to hide the identity of the author, as with exposé books about espionage or crime, or explicit erotic fiction.
[22] Some prolific authors adopt a pseudonym to disguise the extent of their published output, e. g. Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman.
[23] Asa Earl Carter, a Southern white segregationist affiliated with the KKK, wrote Western books under a fictional Cherokee persona to imply legitimacy and conceal his history.
Nicolaus Copernicus put forward his theory of heliocentrism in the manuscript Commentariolus anonymously, in part because of his employment as a law clerk for a church-government organization.
However, in certain cases, Wikipedia's privacy policy permits system administrators to consult the server logs to determine the IP address, and perhaps the true name, of a registered user.
It is possible, in theory, to create an unlinkable Wikipedia pseudonym by using an Open proxy, a Web server that disguises the user's IP address.
Additionally, Wikipedia's public record of a user's interest areas, writing style, and argumentative positions may still establish an identifiable pattern.
[40] Still, some users and privacy activists like the American Civil Liberties Union believe that Internet users deserve stronger pseudonymity so that they can protect themselves against identity theft, illegal government surveillance, stalking, and other unwelcome consequences of Internet use (including unintentional disclosures of their personal information and doxing, as discussed in the next section).
[45] Pseudonym users should bear in mind that, given the current state of Web security engineering, their true names may be revealed at any time.
[46] If users can obtain new pseudonymous identities freely or at a very low cost, reputation-based systems are vulnerable to whitewashing attacks,[47] also called serial pseudonymity, in which abusive users continuously discard their old identities and acquire new ones in order to escape the consequences of their behavior: "On the Internet, nobody knows that yesterday you were a dog, and therefore should be in the doghouse today.
In addition a recent research paper demonstrated that people behave in a potentially more aggressive manner when using pseudonyms/nicknames (due to the online disinhibition effect) as opposed to being completely anonymous.
[61] Steve Wozniak used a pseudonym when attending the University of California, Berkeley after co-founding Apple Computer, because "[he] knew [he] wouldn't have time enough to be an A+ student.
David Agnew was a name used by the BBC to conceal the identity of a scriptwriter, such as for the Doctor Who serial City of Death, which had three writers, including Douglas Adams, who was at the time of writing, the show's script editor.
[64] In another Doctor Who serial, The Brain of Morbius, writer Terrance Dicks demanded the removal of his name from the credits saying it could go out under a "bland pseudonym".
David Johansen, front man for the hard rock band New York Dolls, recorded and performed pop and lounge music under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ross Bagdasarian Sr., creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, wrote original songs, arranged, and produced the records under his real name, but performed on them as David Seville.
He wrote the song "Sugar Walls" for Sheena Easton as "Alexander Nevermind" and "Manic Monday" for the Bangles as "Christopher Tracy".
Black metal artists also adopt pseudonyms, usually symbolizing dark values, such as Nocturno Culto, Gaahl, Abbath, and Silenoz.
