Overview of recent username changes in Bitcointalk

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

I left a red trust too on the new test account by asu.

I’ve never interacted with you on here before & I can see that you’re a Legendary Member with positive trust but part of me can’t help but feel this is a bit of a dick move.

I never too, in fact I am not a meta much guy. But I think this was just a test attempt so no harm will be taken from it.

What harm does publishing that info do to anyone? Your old username is all over the place in every old quote etc. If you want a clean start create a new account.

I am with micG here. I am not thinking about any harm and stuffs but a part of me is saying that it's better to respect ones wish than arguing about it. This whole thread seems wrong to me for those who wanted it to keep the changes unnoticed.

<snip>

If every where keeps been written he was him etc then its just more easy...

I personally have no issue since my reason was about exposing the project I am working for my little girl but yes this is the exact reason (Mic's quote) for those who would not like this topic.

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[LFC_Bitcoin]

The whole idea for ... was to change his username because after some time he thought the username could identify his real identity. He PM’d theymos & was luckily granted permission to change it.

Now he’s got full attention back on him again. I can’t speak for ... but I’d be annoyed if it was me.

Edit - BitcoinGirl.Club - It took me a while to figure out who you were. I was looking through my PM’s from ages ago & I spotted the name

[hacker1001101001]

I gave it a try and it seems that their old username is in available for using it again.

micgoossens - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2744287

I think announcing the registration here is a good move overall and we could always track the activity if needed and act accordingly. Or he could just give the accounts details to micgoossens, oo sorry' El duderino_ and he can change it later. But even after all this I don't think @asu would use this accounts for any trivial benifits.

[suchmoon]

This whole thread seems wrong to me for those who wanted it to keep the changes unnoticed.

Start a new account then. I don't get the point of keeping the same account and not wanting anyone to notice the change, especially considering the squatting risk.

[LoyceV]

This whole thread seems wrong to me for those who wanted it to keep the changes unnoticed.

Start a new account then. I don't get the point of keeping the same account and not wanting anyone to notice the change, especially considering the squatting risk.

Agreed. I don't think you can get a name change if theymos doesn't recognize your username, and if theymos recognizes it, many others will recognize it too. So there's no scenario in which you can change your name unnoticed.

[El duderino_]

For me the discussion stops here.
Do as you al knowing guys seems fit.

If every move is to be questioned and no respect can be shown by just easily say... "hey NP if you feel this is best for you, then we respect that wish"

[JayJuanGee]

This whole thread seems wrong to me for those who wanted it to keep the changes unnoticed.

Start a new account then. I don't get the point of keeping the same account and not wanting anyone to notice the change, especially considering the squatting risk.

Agreed. I don't think you can get a name change if theymos doesn't recognize your username, and if theymos recognizes it, many others will recognize it too. So there's no scenario in which you can change your name unnoticed.

There seems to hardly be any way to have your cake and to eat it too - I mean retaining some of the benefits of the credibility carried over from the old name to the new name, so of course, there can be some benefits in changing your user name, but seemingly the ONLY way to completely lose the connection of the possible negatives that have come to your old user name would be to create a new account and to really start over.. and maybe not even mention the old user name in connection with the new account.

There is also security through obscurity, too.. and there are likely other means of attempting to NOT draw the wrong kinds of attention to yourself.. and the interwebs are filled with fucktwats.. Well, maybe you ONLY need 1 in a million fucktwats, and that is enough to cause potential real life issues in the meat space.

Any of us who are outspoken forum members retain some of these potential security issues, and yeah, there are folks who have purposefully chosen to be notorious public figures in the bitcoin world or the crypto space, and even many of them (if you really attempt to delve into their personal matters) can tell stories of various kinds of issues or attack attempts upon them.. of course, Jameson Lopp is a known example, but there are plenty of others, too.

Just consider some of the issues that we might have admitted to ONLY owning 1 BTC and given some details regarding that 1 BTC, but fuck all about the god damned BTC price going up to a million and now our paltry amount of BTC has real value in terms of the many normies who had not known about BTC in the early adoptions days that we still seem to be in... just like 2017... holy fuck, even I witnessed the crazies coming out of the woodwork in my real life in regards to the BTC topic, and I had wallets with fractions of a BTC that I had considered as just dust that turned into real and meaningful value.. .. that .05 BTC that I had purchased for $12 in late 2015, all of a sudden was worth $1,000 in late 2017.. and I had not even realized that I was carrying around that amount of value.. because it happened so fast, relatively speaking when we have other things going on in our lives, too.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

<snip>

Edit - BitcoinGirl.Club - It took me a while to figure out who you were. I was looking through my PM’s from ages ago & I spotted the name

It was fun for me to have a little bit hide and seek, to create a little confusion. Even in the EPL pool I got one post deleted coz mod thought I was someone else (don't blame him of course) and bunches of others incidences was pretty enjoying. For instance, someone is the EPL pool is thinking they finally found a girl who is interested in the pool in sports (Football/soccer whatever the F**k you call it)😜
May be I need to inform Steve too so that he do not flag my sportsbet.io account for unauthorized access LOL

Point is, someone with a little known to us who had communication with us know our style, interest; so whatever our identity (username), it is meant to get noticed that this is us the same people. There are no need to document anything or to find a special place to farewell us.

If every move is to be questioned and no respect can be shown by just easily say... "hey NP if you feel this is best for you, then we respect that wish"

I go here with Mic again. Haven't we earn at least some credibility to get some respect from the community by not asking too many questions and feel okay just the way we are?

Agreed. I don't think you can get a name change if theymos doesn't recognize your username, and if theymos recognizes it, many others will recognize it too. So there's no scenario in which you can change your name unnoticed.

I think I have already gave the answer with my point above.

There seems to hardly be any way to have your cake and to eat it too - I mean retaining some of the benefits of the credibility carried over from the old name to the new name, so of course, there can be some benefits in changing your user name
<taking off wall of JJG texts LOL>

Pretty simple to make sense. 😀

[LoyceMobile]

There seems to hardly be any way to have your cake and to eat it too - I mean retaining some of the benefits of the credibility carried over from the old name to the new name, so of course, there can be some benefits in changing your user name, but seemingly the ONLY way to completely lose the connection of the possible negatives that have come to your old user name would be to create a new account and to really start over.. and maybe not even mention the old user name in connection with the new account.

There is also security through obscurity, too.. and there are likely other means of attempting to NOT draw the wrong kinds of attention to yourself.. and the interwebs are filled with fucktwats..

This would be something theymos could create: a new rank that shows you're an old user, without disclosing your old account.
If Admin only creates such accounts for users who made a name for themselves, it could be a solution to have and eat the cake!
I too wouldn't mind having more privacy, but once it's gone, there's no way to get it back.

[AB de Royse777]

For long time reputation board was a bit quite and now it seems to have some life again with this new directions  of name changing. Lately I have noticed a lot of the users to do that and as long as the admin is okay with it then I see no problem here. I really do not see any need for discussions too. If those users want privacy then let them have it. Some of them earned the respect from the community for sure.

I too wouldn't mind having more privacy, but once it's gone, there's no way to get it back.

Actually we can. Just stop talking about it and let the topic to be buried under tons of topics we have in the board. Not everyone is LoyceV or other guys who are good at analysing data. Not talking about it anymore at-least will give a semi privacy for those users. Let them enjoy it at-least.

Everyone has their reasons and we should be okay with it instead of pointing out our fingers on them.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

The primary idea behind the creation of this topic is to have a transparency in the change of user names and to prevent further confusion among the new users or someone who is not really having a grasp on these changes recently. The idea behind the topic wasn't to break the privacy of the above mentioned users in the name of revealing their new usernames and I further believe that these forum name changes shouldn't go unnoticed in a forum which deals with reputation and money. We have been noticing various scams which are being used by scammers to trick newbies in the name of reputed users over here and in telegram as well.

I have been part of various torrenting forums for quite a long time (8+ years) where username changes are quite common and we could change the names whenever we like and none does care about that. But as far as this forum is concerned, each username carries a reputation and if the reputation is being mishandled by scammers, we would be seeing unnecessary loss of funds which would turn the plates towards the older user names. To prevent these bizarre circumstances, I have created this topic. This was one among the important reasons why theymos removed the username change feature from this forum.

There is always one satoshi, one sirius, one cobra, one theymos, one micgoossens, one Pamoldar in this bitcoin ecosystem! Fraudsters like CSW shouldn't claim himself to be satoshi nor does any forum scammer shouldn't claim themselves as micgoossens or Pamoldar and these recent name changes should never pave way for those situations.

[JayJuanGee]

There seems to hardly be any way to have your cake and to eat it too - I mean retaining some of the benefits of the credibility carried over from the old name to the new name, so of course, there can be some benefits in changing your user name, but seemingly the ONLY way to completely lose the connection of the possible negatives that have come to your old user name would be to create a new account and to really start over.. and maybe not even mention the old user name in connection with the new account.

There is also security through obscurity, too.. and there are likely other means of attempting to NOT draw the wrong kinds of attention to yourself.. and the interwebs are filled with fucktwats..

This would be something theymos could create: a new rank that shows you're an old user, without disclosing your old account.
If Admin only creates such accounts for users who made a name for themselves, it could be a solution to have and eat the cake!
I too wouldn't mind having more privacy, but once it's gone, there's no way to get it back.

I am not sure if your proposal is really fair for other members, so a lot of this remains a kind of balance in which many of us might come to differing conclusions.  Of course, if we are in a BAD situation, we might want to have as many benefits as we can get, but if we are NOT in the situation, we might blame the other user(s) for possibly contributing to his/her own problem by employing weak OpSec.  So, yeah, there are degrees, and sometimes even the ability of members to go back and wipe all of their previous posts can be a cost upon the membership to have to suffer with members who seem to NOT take responsibility for their earlier posts.. but then again, 4 or more years later, there might be some motivations for members to delete some prior disclosures.. and sometimes even to edit earlier posts to change what had actually been said and the context.

Surely, I am NOT proclaiming to know any of the answers exactly, even for myself, because even I understand that I am likely NOT the same person who I was nearly 6 years ago when I began posting in this forum.  Also, sometimes I might disagree with some kind of content of the post of another person, or even some kind of mixing of real world and forum situations, or become sympathetic to something that seems to have had happened to another member in the real world that might be attributable to forum information/conduct, but then the circumstances are NOT always well known or even knowable either.  I have thought one way about the circumstances of another forum member, and then a third forum member comes into the scene to assert another scenario that I had not considered in my prior assessment.

When I first joined the forum, I, actually, was quite bothered by forum practices that allowed editing or deleting of prior posts, but now, I understand that there can be some value to members who might get themselves into a bit of a pickle (and might not even have had been of their own creation) and might need to edit or delete some or all of their earlier posts without asking for permission from forum administrators.. even while the forum itself may end up suffering somewhat from the removal of some of those earlier contributions and context for other posts that might have been built around their earlier posts.

[El duderino_]

The primary idea behind the creation of this topic is to have a transparency in the change of user names and to prevent further confusion among the new users or someone who is not really having a grasp on these changes recently. The idea behind the topic wasn't to break the privacy of the above mentioned users in the name of revealing their new usernames and I further believe that these forum name changes shouldn't go unnoticed in a forum which deals with reputation and money. We have been noticing various scams which are being used by scammers to trick newbies in the name of reputed users over here and in telegram as well.

I have been part of various torrenting forums for quite a long time (8+ years) where username changes are quite common and we could change the names whenever we like and none does care about that. But as far as this forum is concerned, each username carries a reputation and if the reputation is being mishandled by scammers, we would be seeing unnecessary loss of funds which would turn the plates towards the older user names. To prevent these bizarre circumstances, I have created this topic. This was one among the important reasons why theymos removed the username change feature from this forum.

There is always one satoshi, one sirius, one cobra, one theymos, one micgoossens, one Pamoldar in this bitcoin ecosystem! Fraudsters like CSW shouldn't claim himself to be satoshi nor does any forum scammer shouldn't claim themselves as micgoossens or Pamoldar and these recent name changes should never pave way for those situations.

I said last post a little bit up here, but serious bro.... I know probably best intentions etc

But all those above points are similar like minerjones (real deal) a scammer names himself minerjones. (or whatever)
The copy will be revealed by the forum ASAP more fast as a newbie finding out in this thread or where ever who is who.....

Like micgoossens is taken—-> instant red trust problem solved, each name that’s been changed then the previous could be banned or made and given red trust to prevent all the above ....

From this OP I know it’s best intentions as I seen him before creating and contributing (I do respect you)
-though I would think our points to have some meaning etc and some people a bit disappointed me but whatever the world is still round and going..... so that’s that

But I could easily think a dozen of names if they made this thread I would say just some merit hunting going on...

[hacker1001101001]

Did someone thought about the effect of this username changes on the other users trust lists who have included or excluded them ? Like trust list is organised by using the usernames of the accounts and not UID so even after username change the UID remains same and only the username would be changed. Most of the user's trust list would be up with one of the old username and all gets messed up.


Anyways, the account registered by @asu under micgoossens username is autobanned by some logical mod around. I don't think you need to worry about it again El duderino_. Enjoy your privacy !

Code:

Autoban user: N/A in topic #0 by member #2744287

[suchmoon]

Anyways, the account registered by @asu under micgoossens username is autobanned by some logical mod around.

That's not cool. I hope mods make an exception for asu otherwise he'll get banned for evasion if some asshole reports him.

[AB de Royse777]

Did someone thought about the effect of this username changes on the other users trust lists who have included or excluded them ? Like trust list is organised by using the usernames of the accounts and not UID so even after username change the UID remains same and only the username would be changed. Most of the user's trust list would be up with one of the old username and all gets messed up.

The trust list in our trust setting page, takes the usernames but stores in the database using the userID (u). So changing username is not effecting anyone trust list. I had El duderino_ in my trust list when he had his previous username and I see it has been changed to El duderino_ without needing any touch from me.

May be for scrappers like LoyceV, DdmrDdmr and others will find some difficulties with this username changes but with the system, I think we are really fine.

That's not cool. I hope mods make an exception for asu otherwise he'll get banned for evasion if some asshole reports him.

Technically yes but practically it will be very wrong. Rules are made (al-thought we do not have any official rules) to protect the community not to use against it.

If we act practical then I do not see any problem at all.

[LoyceV]

May be for scrappers like LoyceV, DdmrDdmr and others will find some difficulties with this username changes but with the system, I think we are really fine.

Correct. When updating my Trust list viewer, "missing" names give an error which requires manual intervention. After that, my Trust list viewer shows the new name from that week onwards. Older versions still show the old name though.

[yahoo62278]

I thought most bitcoiners were all about anonymity, security, and privacy? Seems to me that outing these users when they changed their usernames, would be an invasion of privacy. I'm sure each and every one of them had a reason to change their name correct?

Now with this thread, the name change was mostly worthless for most of the users who requested it. I see some arguing that the only way to get away from it completely would be to start all over. Well, that is of course an option, but then they lose their rank. That may or may not be important to everyone, but I know some of these guys earn money in signature campaigns so starting over may not have been an option unless they didn't mind losing the income.

Why grant the name change for these users if this was going to be the result?

[Mitchell]

Why grant the name change for these users if this was going to be the result?

I'm almost certain that most name changes aren't done to hide who they are. I mean, if you fucked up in the past and change your name to hide that, there will always be quotes off your old name. Plus trust feedback and flags don't change, so what's the point in doing that? The only way to truly start over is to create a new account.

A name change will, of course, still increase your privacy a little bit, but all I'm trying to say is that there will always be posts that contain your old name. Maybe even positive trust ratings where they mention your old name.

[Dabs]

This would be something theymos could create: a new rank that shows you're an old user, without disclosing your old account.
If Admin only creates such accounts for users who made a name for themselves, it could be a solution to have and eat the cake!
I too wouldn't mind having more privacy, but once it's gone, there's no way to get it back.

That would be something, but if your new rank, for example, shows as "New Legendary" instead of just "Legendary" then that new account get's "noticed" as well, and some internet detective is going to connect the dots. Anything but the original rank is going to arouse suspicion.

As well, a brand new account with a rank higher than Newbie, would look interesting if it had 0 merits and 1 post or something like that, ... assuming it gets created with the minimum required for that rank, then it would start out with 1000 merits for Legendary, but none earned (and of course no sMerits to give out), I don't think the post count would display properly.

Anyone wanting to actually use the new account would have to "prepare" it by posting real posts for a few days to make it look "normal", then granted the rank or something.

Obviously, any feedback or reputation from the old account would not transfer to the new one.

If it's too much work, admins won't do it and just avoid the issue altogether. And finally, creation date, will it be "today" or back dated?