Incognito Profiles

i cannot say thAT in reality  i  am   President Obama.ooops

2

Does it matter whether my name is John or Bob?

Does it matter whether I am 16 or 61?

Does it matter whether I am from Russia or Australia?

Does it matter whether ................?

The answer of course is no...it does not.

...it does matter that I can play chess...and this is all.

@Schachgeek

Wrong, dear friend!

You are mixing or confusing two things: banning cheaters, closing their accounts, it is a job of staff, OK. But private statistical testing of hypothesis whether player X is a cheater, it can be done by everyone. And everyone has the right to make conclusions and precautions, especially when the staff has failed: block this player, not invite him and privately warn friends or tournament directors. Conclusion backed on statistical data analysis is quite different thing than just some feeling. The only thing which cannot be done: public reveal in open forums. I wholeheartedly agree, because biased accusation can bring serious moral damage if the player has been honest or it may prematurely warn a cheater to take countermeasure. But again, you missed the point that back then a lot of members didn't consider Cheating Forum group as open forum and felt free to discuss cheating with names and offensive language. And i must repeat: in this specific case, it wasn't wrong accusation.

The rest of your statement, is it a bad joke or attempt to get me angry? Look you talker, i spent a lot of money on this site, because i trusted Erik & staff to develop this site and keep cheating under control. The situation got worse instead, cheating became more widespread and talk about it became censored. But i still believe that cheaters can be kept out of community, if honest users will trust each other and cooperate on this goal. And knowing others, that is the necessary part, but only the first step. However, there is no place for anonymity.

@Karl

Ofcourse i got it, but we came here to play chess, not download porn. In other words you say: You are all untrustworthy, you have no right to know my name, because i don't trust you, i want to keep my nick apart from my real identity so i could use bad language, cheat, tease others or whatever i want to, leave without shame and then come back under new nick. Do you realize that you break the "Gens Una Sumus" chessplayer's motto? Chessplayers trust each other. However i see only minority chess.com members are chessplayers.

If you are that afraid of personality theft, why do you use the internet? I would agree: it is pretty good to stay anonymous, but if you want to play chess and take it seriously... Look, nobody can play anonymously in FIDE and ICCF tournaments.

One of the reasons, why chess.com became so popular site, is that it allows anonymity. However Erik should finally realize that this way leads to nothing. He got quantity over quality. Patzers & cheaters dominate in numbers over good legitimate chessplayers. Patzers don't care about cheaters and cheaters can come back unlimited times to cheat again. It is perfectly OK for casual chess. But if chess.com wants to be sound non-engine alternative to ICCF (which allows engines) - and I want to, then anonymity must be eliminated, at least in the case of "core" chessplayers.

Ofcourse, you may stay anonymous. But you must accept that i will never treat you as trustworthy serious chessplayer.

The original post was about "I have noticed, that playing alot of online chess,  it seems the majority of the profiles I am seeing have no information at all,"

Please don't turn the thread into a cheating discussion that doesn't belong in the forums.

@Karl

I said FIDE and ICCF. Both have online databases of members with real names. Every FIDE member can be searched online, including me. Do you think you are something special? Are you GM or what? Who would care to steal your chess identity and abuse it? Ofcourse, nobody wants you to reveal your credit card info, your criminal record or your psychiatric diagnose.

Stay anonymous and enjoy playing your casual chess games. Good luck!

Jerks abound! There is a growing army of Billy No-mates' here with self-inflated egos that seriously need to go out into the real world and get a life!

Those of you who collect 'friends' and boast their numbers in a sad and veiled attempt to claim any kind of normalcy and bolster your egos. . . take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourselves who you're kidding! 

Moderation!

You had me at "Jerks abound!".

You lost me when you kept going.

 Well, I thought that we are here to play casual chess games.

The insistence on disclosure is absurd.

My right to privacy trumps your right to be nosey.

Maybe you should delete that reference to the fact that you are in Calgary. That is a dead giveaway to the Internet terrorists that will eventually track you down......  

What's important, though, is that it's information I've chosen to disclose as opposed to information I've been required to disclose.

Calgary's a big place and I'm sure the "internet terrorists" have bigger fish to fry.  I'll take my chances.

Same here. I've got a whole county to hide in if internet terrorists decide to take me down ;)

If it's on a server somewhere, I've chosen to share it.

I trust certain sites to guard my privacy more than others, my bank for instance, but I understand that this doesn't mean it's 100% safe.  It's a calculated risk and one I personally  assess on a case by case basis and conservatively at that. 

There's certainly not enough information on my chess.com profile or in the content I've contributed to give you any idea where to go next to find more information about me.  That's very much deliberate.

Encryption works.  Unless you've let someone install a keylogger on the machine from which you do your online banking your data is safe in transit.

Not enough faith in large prime numbers, Schachgeek? IMO if someone has the mathematical skill or practical ability to break public key encryption in a timely fashion, there's not likely to be any method safe short of inventing a virtual version of 1-time pads.

Of course, being a member of the above mentioned military means I don't worry so much about crazy stalker people getting on base to find me, and I'm still young enough yet to consider myself invincible and not likely to undergo identity theft.

Are you suggesting this isn't my real name?

but can your pigs?