When you access the web from the convenience of your computer or smartphone, the Internet may seem completely anonymous. After all, you are in front of your computer by yourself and nobody can see the screen of your computer but you. This feeling of anonymity is highly deceptive because the websites that you visit can track your location and collect all kinds of information about you.
Depending on who you are and what goals you have, you may want to create different email accounts and different handles to use on different forums and websites. One of the mistakes that a lot of people make is that they use the same handle everywhere. For example, they would use johnk0823 as the Facebook address for their profile on Facebook, LinkedIn address for their profile on LinkedIn, Twitter handle, forum name, email handle and so on. If that is what you do, finding all kinds of information about you will be extremely easy. By typing this handle into www.Google.com or https://pipl.com/ anyone could find all the pages that include that handle. For this reason, you want to create different handles for different websites and purposes. Try to vary both the letters and the digits. Do not use the same name with different combinations of digits that represent your birthday such as 0823, 2308, aug23 for the birthday of August, 23.
It is a good idea to use various handles even if you don’t have anything to hide. There may be issues that will arise that you are not aware of when you are registering an account with a website. If you are using the same handle in multiple places, you will be easy to identify while it may not be something that you want. For example, you may be a doctor, a lawyer or some other professional that wants to be a part of a mailing list or an online forum without having other users see “Dr.” or “Esq.” in your name and sending you tons of questions. It is also possible that you do business on the Internet and are well-known in certain circles. You also socialize on the Internet. In this case, you also may want to choose to keep these activities separate, so that people that you socialize with don’t know your job title or your income.