Privacy, Anonymity, and Compartmentalization

[lisarea]

These articles are all relevant to my interests:

The embarssment of online handles | MetaFilter

As too many people are already painfully aware, I'm all over any opportunity to discuss how current trends in social norms are NOT TO MY PERSONAL LIKING. NOT. TO. MY. PERSONAL. LIKING.

So ha ha, I want to fight about this stuff AGAIN.

Back when I first started internetting, one of the biggest appeals was being able to post in some at least semi-anonymous form. That is, I could discuss things without a bunch of weird, confounding social layers and have the things I was talking about stand on their own merits.

And although that's become more and more difficult to maintain, I have tried to keep at least some degree of compartmentalization to my online communications. Mostly just in terms of using different usernames and identifying information on different sites. Not because I think it's some failsafe type of anonymity--I've actually had people recognize and creep on me to various degrees when I was posting under different usernames--but just because I don't understand why someone would casually feel the need to follow me around like that. And, again, a major appeal of internet forums is the lack of social context. I still like being able to have what I'm saying be taken out of context of social perceptions sometimes.

It's only recently that I've begun to appreciate how many people not only don't do that, but don't even understand why someone would. I realize a lot of this is a result of the normalizing of Facebook terms of service and shit, but I'm wondering how widespread and how accepted that really is.

So, apart from hiding porn browsing or something else you actively don't want people to know for some articulable reason, do you post anonymously or use different IDs on different forums or for different subject areas?

If so, what are those usernames? What passwords do you use to sign in to them? What ranges of IP addresses you post from, and what are the MAC addresses of the internet devices in your home and workplace? What is your daily schedule like, what pets do you have, and what are you wearing right now?