There are so many devil-in-the-details issues raised in this thread that had not occurred to me before. For example, the lack of requirement for any investigation makes it completely plausible, in fact inevitable, that the real "Susan Jones from Coventry" would have a "record" and not even know about it:
bishopgiggles - "Re: using real names/aliases online, is there any requirement when reporting a hate incident to have any kind of proof that the person posting it is the person being reported? If i went online as Susan Jones from Coventry and posted something racist, would another real Susan Jones from Coventry get it put on her police record?"
Where this affects employment opportunities, the impact sounds very similar to police collusion with the illegal Blacklisting of construction workers, trade unionists and allegedly "subversive" civil servants:
newint.org/features/2019/03/07/union-blacklisting-and-police-infiltration-ten-years
The difference is that this time the process has been legitimised and follows official guidance from the College of Policing.
Which leads on to another Stasi-like aspect that has not (I think) been mentioned so far in this thread, ie. that the Police do not need to receive a report from a third party in order to record a "non-crime hate crime" aka "hate incident".
A Police Officer is entitled to take the initiative to record a "hate incident", on the basis that he/she believes that something said or done might be perceived by another person as "hateful" and "offensive".
IIRC Oxford Police decided off their own bat that "Women don't have penises" stickers were "hate incidents", logging one "incident" per sticker discovered. They asked for help from the public in identifying who was posting the stickers, so that these "hate incidents" did not remain anonymous.
The other side of the coin, already mentioned by PP, is that unquestioning recording of "non-crime hate crime incidents", whether attributable or anonymous, has implications for "hate incident" statistics:
ThePurported - "Why can't the police anonymise these records? These 'incidents' are nothing like crimes, so the only purpose of logging them is statistical analysis - right? And even then, the value of the data is questionable when it includes 'incidents' like someone tweeting 'Huh.'"
Or beeping your car horn at someone with a protected characteristic:
"Elderly woman questioned by police as hate criminal after ‘beeping car horn at black driver’"
Hate crime rules forced police to quiz the pensioner after she beeped at a driver who was "taking ages" at a petrol station
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/elderly-woman-questioned-police-hate-13535704
Several police forces also record hate crimes against people who present as members of "alternative subcultures", eg. goths, punks, metal-heads:
www.policeprofessional.com/news/force-highlights-subculture-hate-crime/
This arose from the murder of Sophie Lancaster who was targeted because she was a goth. I do not know if this includes recording "non-crime hate crime incidents" but, logically, it should.
This all comes from a good place and with the best of intentions but, where the "hate incident" system is concerned, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Spero - until you explained what had happened with you I had assumed that anyone reported would be contacted by the Police. The fact that the Police do not routinely do this gives the lie to this being a system to prevent "escalation" from "hate incidents" to hate crimes.
Without any action other than recording allegations as facts this does not seem to be anything other than a way of blacklisting people. It's worse than McCarthyism.