What's the etiquette when you recognise someone on here?

[Notlostjustexploring]

I've just stumbled across a thread and realised I recognise a poster in real life. What is the etiquette? Do I say something? I can't work out or not if I'd want to know, but a look through my own posting history, although intermittent, is at times a pretty intimate view on my life.

The thread in question was fairly non contentious, and the poster is a friend, but not so close that we'd know every detail of each others lives anyway.

Do I let them know so they can name change? How would they feel if they knew I could look at their entire posting history and know it was them? (I've not looked btw, although it's on the internet, it still feels like a breach of privacy!!)

What do I do?

I might send a pm. I would want to know if it was me.

(This is why I name change far more often than is convenient to me ...)

Thanks!! I thought I'd want to know too, but wasn't sure.

Sorry to the people now paranoidly awaiting a message...

You say nothing and quietly online stalk her for the rest of both of your lives...
obviously

I wouldn't say anything tbh.

"You say nothing and quietly online stalk her for the rest of both of your lives...
obviously""

I mean, it is Lockdown 2.0, and Netflix is only so interesting...

I agree say nothing... No good can come of it

If its me I would want to know.

Say nothing. I recognised somebody from my village a while ago. I've forgotten their user name now.

I wouldn’t say anything as I wouldn’t want them reading all my past posts either....

I’d send a PM and would want to know if it was me.

This happened to me when I first joined MN. I asked for advice about something on here and then mentioned the same thing at a baby group. We became good friends and used to talk about MN a lot. She was MN royalty back in the day and used to go to a lot of meet-ups.

I would send a pm. A post in staff room a couple of years ago was easily recognisable as a colleague, I msgd her so she could change both her username and the detail she had given in the post

Okay so that's

3 don't tell
2 say tell
1 suggestion of creepy behaviour.

I'm actually kinda hoping that she wanders past this thread and conveniently provides her preference while maintaining anonymity, but that might be too much to hope for!!

Is it me?
I'd pm her

I spotted someone last week for the first time. It was SO outing (descriptions of fairly unusual family setup, plus her and husband’s jobs) that I thought she knew she’d potentially be recognised and didn’t care 🤷🏻‍♀️

This has happened to me twice. Once with someone I don't know that well (said nothing, pretty sure she's name changed multiple times since then anyway) once with someone I know pretty well (told her when I saw her). So yeah, for me it depends how well you know them.

Just carry on as normal. Forget it.

I once recognised someone’s sister —because they were mental—. Either that or I was being catfished. DH and I both worked with the sister and I was on one of the pregnancy support groups on here. My pregnancy-related story is pretty recognisable if you know me. The colleague was batshit crazy. I spent 8 months posting away, and when people started to do birth announcements I realised that one of the other posters was related to my colleague (baby name, middle name, weight etc were identical). Except that this poster had a completely normal story (normal pregnancy issues, fears about CS, nothing unusual), whereas according to the colleague, who kept buttonholing me and telling me all about her sister’s pregnancy, she had cancer and was under the care of an oncologist, would be getting a double mastectomy at the same time as her C section, etc etc etc. I messaged the poster and said I thought I recognised her and was she related to X? And she said yes but not to tell her because she’d shared some personal stuff eg details of tearing in first pregnancy. I dithered about telling her that colleague was saying she had cancer when she’d never mentioned it, but decided not to.

Time passed, and I found out from someone else that colleague had form for pretending relatives had cancer. This person suggested I’d been catfished. I still don’t know! I think colleague wouldn’t have been able to restrain herself from doing the cancer story on MN for attention, but I didn’t confront her and I’ll never know now (she left and it’s been 8 years).

Not fussed. I don't post anything exciting. Mostly makeup/skin/cats

If it’s me I wanna know

And this is why I change my username frequently!

If it's me, I'd like to know who you were so I can read all your threads but I wouldn't be bothered about being outed.

If it is/were me, I'd want you to tell me. PM would be fine. But crucially you also have to let me know who you are, otherwise I'd be walking around paranoid about who knows my secrets, or could!

So first of all, you need to name change yourself!

Off to change my username...

I would want to know as I feel like people post certain things on here for advice or to vent that they wouldn't chat to close people about.
I'm fairly new to Mumsnet so sorry if this is a silly question but if you change your user name does that mean that people cannot track your previous posts? I suppose if this is the case it is a good idea to change your name from time to time.