T'internet should not be anonymous

[deliakate]

For safety, the regulation of fraud and crime, not to mention bullying and harassment - I think everyone should be issued with one email address only. It should be impossible to have multiple online personas - you should be forced to be yourself everywhere.

I read so much about the evils of the internet (OK, have just spent a few days with Torygraph reading in-laws), but I do think there is an horrific, murky world on here that is having harmful effects 'irl'.

Arguments against - "but the internet helps so many people talk about problems and get support". Possibly it does. My own experience is that some of the most hurtful and serious problems are disbelieved by about 50% of respondents, rising to 80% by about the third page or so. And a lot of the advice can be completely misguided and frankly wrong when it comes. Plus, there already exist many organisations that people in real need can contact with trained volunteers/staff there to help or just listen.

I think this might be the way the net is headed - I hope so because our police force simply can't keep up with the workload and the crime is very real, and I think, outweighs the benefit of having a bit of a laugh without anyone knowing its you (frankly, who cares its you anyway?).

I have 3 or 4 email addresses! One's personal, one's work, one's web based, one's for registering on websites to avoid spam in the other 3.

I am myself in all of my guises :)

soley because of the increase in the amount of children raped because of the internet insatialable appetite for child pornography I will have to sadly agree with you.

If it reduces this at all then i can't see how any other benefits can outweight the pain and distress caused.

yabu.

i have 3 email accounts 1) for online accounts such as banking BT ect 2) for parenting and social sites 3) for crappy sites

Loss of anonymity is already designed into using Facebook effectively, and Google+ is trying and failing to get real names only. For a lot of people, these are the internet, and websites with full anonymity and interestingly homebrew design (like this one) are the minority.

tralalala - that's mainly what I was thinking about too. The police just can't keep up, its so sad.

If I couldn't post on here anonymously, I wouldn't be able to talk freely about cervical mucus and best positions for conception and so on for fear my clients would stumble across it and learn rather more about me that than they ever wanted to know!

i think it is up to facebook and the like to take more responsibility and for the public to be more aware of bullying on line and not to put every single thing about their lives on the internet especially fb, accounts can be hacked into so best only putting on fb what you do not mind others knowing

it cannot possibly happen and those trying to contact children or harass people will find a way round it. the vast majority of people who use the internet do so in a good way. I would not want a work and personal email to be the same, too many people have access to work emails

I have 5 and am quite capable of using them all responsibly.

YABU.

personal email
work email
ebay selling email
ebay buying email
online shopping email
job application email
random survey email
facebook email

tralala: do you have any evidence at all that child rapes are increasing in number and that this is due to pornography on the Internet??

FWIW, I have a work email, a private email and unlimited 'junk' email addresses (run my own domain so can make them up at will.)

I also use truly anonymous systems such as TOR. These systems are vital to people fighting for their freedom in oppressive regimes such as Syria and China. The people running those places would like nothing more than a non-anonymous Internet, luckily that's physically impossible.

I am easily identifiable and I know that and do not try to hide (I think you have to either be scrupulously anonymous or accept that you could be found) but I have name changed in the past to discuss very difficult things, esp. when DH was struggling with MH issues.

I also have two ebay accounts as DH took over my first adn now runs a business (or aprt of one) via that, we used both for ages but found that nobody would sell stuff I wanted to buy to me becuase theya ssumed Dh wanted to make a profit on it: could not find anyone to sell us ahcargers for a toy belonging to a boy for ages (DH deals in a specialist branch of electronics). In order to get a differenta ccount / paypal I ahd to set up another email; we also ahd to do that so DH could get a FB account (he is at uni, fairly essential to keep inj touch) as I already ahd used our main one; then there is our university email account (one each), and a business one each that we don't want linked to our social ones for FB etc......

We've nothing to hide at all but it works. I especially don't want my work email linked to the one I use for the boy's specialists as whilst sometimes it is great when a professional knows I am in that field, sometimes it really is not- depends on the individual. Not aprticualarly keen on getting the back up of a professional just becuase of what I do and thefore missing out on something that could benefit them!

What tells us rapes of children have gone up? Or could it be reported / identified rape? I get that the money of the internet is tempting but is it really something non apedophiles would do- surely you either are or you are not?

YABU only honest people would stick to it. Criminals get around the law. Its what they do, there is no way to police one email address.

malinois - I used to work with the child trafficking team and I sadly can tell you the internet has lead to a large increase of demand for child pornography. The internet has made it so much more accessible (as with all porn) previously it was very difficult to get hold of hard/illegal porn. Now it's just a few clicks away. And with the demand (and money) comes of course the supply.

Some of the stories the children we worked with would break your heart. They nearly destroyed me. There are some very sick people out there but it's hard for the police to work out were they are.

We had cases where the police knew children were being abused in real time but were unable to know where they actually were.

In our training we were given lots of info about the research into...but I can't remember it exactly and am NOT going to google for it for obvious reasons.

btw to remind you, people get false NHS numbers, passports, identity cards... There is no way you can make what you want possible in an electronic age.

so absolutely no privacy and a central agency being able to see every single thing you say, do, look at, buy etc?

are you insane?

it's like the ultimate cctv.

no thanks.

agree babynames - no chance in hell thank god. and it's one of the remarkable gifts of the internet. yes misused by some but for the vast majority a great gift that has literally changed the world.

the egyptian revolution would not have happened without the internet and could never have happened if the internet was policed and people did not have anonymity.

Agree with SAF, would add that you won't get whistle blowing if all addresses are fully authenticated, nor would AIBU be a much fun. Benefits far outweigh risks IMO

I currently have nine active email addresses, I think:
one personal one
one old personal one from my ISP that I haven't cut everything over from yet
two for registering for sites where I think I might get spam
one that I only use when posting "you can email me on..." on MN, that uses my MN screenname (actually my old MN screenname)
one Gmail address because I needed a Gmail address for something (I forget what, actually)
one alumni email address from old university
two for work (one company took over another)

In the past, but no longer current, I have also had two other personal email addresses, five other work email addresses, and one college email address. I think that's it, but I might be forgetting some. And several email addresses of the form [email protected] will end up in my work email inbox.

Quite apart from all the other totally impractical aspects of your suggestion, I don't see how you can possibly imagine work and personal email being handled at a single address. The huge range of financial, legal, security and confidentiality/privacy issues that are obvious even on thirty seconds' consideration would be insuperable.

Good luck with that.

It ain't gonna happen.

Everyone is hung up on the email ad thing...... you would obv have different suffixes or prefixes to be able to organise your mails. Effectively, different mailboxes, but all under the same umbrella - you would be YOU, everywhere.

so traceable by the government everywhere. traceable by marketers everywhere. traceable by abusive ex's, family that you want to get away from, student loans companies, trolls who were stalking you etc etc etc.

no egyptian revolution, no messages out from iran, etc.

i'm insurance companies could get in on it too - no insurance for people who can be proved likely to partake in risky behaviour. just one big central database for hte picking.

and do you get the kind of skill levels some people have on computers? how much they can do? what they can hack? how many servers they can go through to be completely untraceable? the dark outer realms of the internet that you and i couldn't even access?

but you think they'll go, oh ok, just the one email address and no anonymity, sure! how do you perceive policing this? it's just not a policable entity.

Everyone is hung up on the email ad thing...... you would obv have different suffixes or prefixes to be able to organise your mails

On this thread I'm more reading everybody is concerned about Privacy, not Ads OP. care to opine on that?

Incidentally, Facebook (a closed, built for profit environment) tries to run a single named identity system, but a quick search for julius caesar or genghis khan show you its bollox. And if they can't do it....