Recently, few people consider the desire of Internet users to hide their real identity by hiding behind some virtual image as paranoia. And the point here is not just purely Russian specifics, when the authorities are trying to get into not only the wallets and beds, but also the heads of citizens, but a global trend, namely, the revival and expansion of the activities of international cybercrime, which is active and quite successful hunt for personal information.
A clear illustration is the high-profile scandal with the theft of customer data at the largest online auction eBay, which broke out in the spring of 2014. Let us recall that at the end of winter, attackers managed to penetrate the company’s internal network through the accounts of its employees and, within a month, copy information about clients, including names, dates of birth, telephone numbers, addresses and encrypted passwords for accessing eBay services. According to experts, cyber hackers obtained information about approximately 145 million people, and this data is of such a nature that it can (and will!) be used in the future for unauthorized penetration into any electronic accounts of these people, including those that are not yet doesn't even exist.
The frequency and scale of such cyberattacks is alarming. You can recall another recent hack of the American supermarket chain Target, as a result of which the personal data of up to 40 million people was stolen, including detailed information about payment cards, sufficient to make their duplicates. This ease of theft and, most importantly, its prevalence indicate that even the largest companies are unable to guarantee the confidentiality of your data. This means that you should think several times before sending your personal data, which is of considerable value, to someone. And in general, it’s worth thinking about whether it’s really necessary to enter real information about yourself just to subscribe to some mailings or services.
Here are some tips for hiding your personal information from online attackers, including using pseudonyms, disposable email addresses, and fake location information. Of course, in some cases - such as e-government services or online banking - it is impossible to do without entering real data, but for this there are many ways to confirm your identity that are not related to the Internet: for example, through mail or SMS. In other cases, remember that not everyone should be trusted with their true personal information.
Don't tell anyone your real age
Advice that will especially appeal to children who love to visit sites for those over eighteen years old, but at the same time it is also quite relevant for all other Internet users. If some site asks you to “prove” your age (usually these are resources about alcohol, tobacco, or “adult” sites), just lie. The owners of such a resource do not need to know your real age, so you are not obliged to tell it. You have the right to name absolutely any date of birth, and thereby bypass this purely formal “protection” from minor visitors.
When you sign up for Facebook, you'll also be asked for your date of birth, partly to guard against inappropriate content, but mostly to send out notifications to your "friends" that it's time to congratulate you. However, if these are real friends, then they will not need such a notification, so you are free to indicate a completely arbitrary date in your profile.
Use a disposable email address
When registering on various websites and online services, you are often asked to enter an email address to send a confirmation, but it is not at all necessary to use your real mailbox for this, much less create a new one on purpose. It is enough to use the services of numerous free disposable mail services.
For example, on the Mailinator website you can create a fake temporary address in a few seconds just to receive confirmation. Any inbox folders on this site are created immediately when a message arrives at them. Having received a letter to the address like, you can send a confirmation and thereby register on the desired site without disclosing personal data. After this, you can simply forget about such an address, and you will not receive mountains of spam at your real email address. This is a great way to try out a new service, and if you like it, you can always change your email address in its settings.
MaskMe is even easier to use: this extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers creates a pop-up window whenever a form appears on a site asking for an email address, and offers to “mask it” using a fake address. All messages arriving at such an address will be forwarded to your real email (you need to register for this), but it will remain unknown to the site owners. The paid version ($5 per month) will allow you to replace your phone number and payment card data in the same way.
Be realistic in details
Creating a fake identity on the Internet is a great way to protect your personal data, but you need to be realistic in the details, otherwise attentive operators of various services can simply liquidate accounts created on behalf of such an identity, with the loss of all data and other unpleasant consequences.
For example, you need to choose a plausible-sounding name (Andrei Solovyov, but not Strelka the Dog) and a simple personality description (a student or employee, but not a champion in professional train collision). The virtual location should also be either well known to you personally (for example, you work there or regularly vacation), or known to one of your friends.
Be sure to upload a photo to your profile, since an account without a photo is perceived by many as obviously fake and intended for spreading spam or trolling. Since we are not talking about your own photo, you can find some picture from a “clipart” or, for example, draw your avatar on some free service like Bitstrips. Never use other people's photos if you don't want problems with the law and accusations that you are trying to impersonate some other real person.
Imaginary personalities. How to create your own doubles for good
Thanks to Hollywood blockbusters, we know that people with mental disorders have many diseases, for example, they can imagine themselves as someone else and behave accordingly. A classic example of such a film is “Fight Club” from Fincher, the film was shot with large stitches, in Palahniuk’s book, this story is told more fully and better. For those who are not familiar with the film or book, I recommend catching up, but here I will provide a brief synopsis. The main character is tired of everyday life and one day he meets a person who shows him a way out of his usual life, this is a fight club or fights with other yuppies who are also tired of the surrounding reality. Fights give a taste for life, open up new opportunities, give a new world. At the end of the film, the hero realizes that all this time he was two people at the same time, he recognizes this by indirect signs, and this is where the picture ends. And this is where our story begins. Unfortunately, popular culture loves cliches, and the history of psychological doubles is built on them. In the minds of an ordinary person, having a psychological double means being flawed, as well as having a serious pathology - in a word, being sick. Balls stuck behind the rollers is not the best diagnosis for any person, so we avoid even the thought that this is possible with us. And we drive away everything that we consider pathological. Fortunately, psychological doubles are by no means only negative, they are a part of our consciousness that today has been studied from the point of view of pathology only. And, probably, this explains how we relate to such a phenomenon and why we often do not put it to our service.
People have been inventing additional personalities or guises for their consciousness since time immemorial. Typically, they projected a new personality outward in order to achieve results in the outside world. As part of my story, we are not interested in this part of the story, we are all trying to be better in the eyes of others and achieve this in different ways. This is part of the life of any person, fortunately, I do not know of any exceptions (I have seen posturing and denial of this fact, but never a complete absence of pretend play - the question is how much the mask differs from the person). If the projection of one’s identity outside is considered acceptable in society and is not particularly discussed, then it is a completely different matter when a person begins to project it onto his consciousness. This is already interpreted as a sign of a mental disorder. But is it? Is it possible to create our second self or alter ego without damaging our consciousness and what benefits can we derive from this?
The answer should be sought in childhood games that every person goes through. At the age of 3 to 5 years, children first have imaginary friends, they also try on various roles (superhero, princess, astronaut, fireman, etc.). If parents are calm about the roles of their children, then they often perceive an attempt to talk with imaginary friends as a deviation from the norm. Child psychologists have spent more than their time explaining why this is normal and why this stage is important for a child’s development. By the way, this is an excellent illustration of what is considered normal in our society and what is not. For children, we allow the opportunity to play with the imagination in someone else, but for ourselves we almost always deny this possibility. And in vain.
I don’t pretend to be the ultimate truth, but it seems to me that it was mass culture and old Freud who worked to enclose our consciousness in the erroneous concept of a “healthy” perception of consciousness within the framework of one person with strictly defined characteristics and signs. At the beginning of the 20th century, Freud, in his work “The Uncanny,” examines the effect of doubles, an exclusively negative interpretation - according to Freud, this is a pathology. The students of the founder of psychoanalysis hold approximately the same views; they set a completely confident direction for the development of this science. Is Freud to blame for this and should we blame him for it? I don’t think so, since he grew up in an environment where there were already fully formed ideas about psychological doubles. One of the brightest novels is “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Stevenson, this work appeared back in 1886. In his posthumous letter, the main character, the positive Dr. Jekyll, admits that he discovered that there is both a positive and a negative principle in consciousness. Man is a synthesis of two principles, and he was able to separate them. And therefore, all the crimes committed by Mr. Hyde are crimes of the dark side of Dr. Jekyll's personality. In my opinion, this story is the most vivid reflection of those concepts that existed during the period of romanticism and were picked up by modern mass culture.
Let's dig a little deeper - the 17th-18th century, the era of romanticism. For psychological doubles in German works, the term doppelganger is introduced (translated as a banal double - Doppelganger). Obviously, this human double appears as an antipode to the already existing image of a guardian angel and has a negative orientation; it has a demonic nature. Some say that the doppelganger has a physical essence, others point out that it is an aspect of human consciousness. We can go even further in time, plunging into Celtic legends, which also talk about doppelgängers. But within the framework of my story, it was important for me to show that the phenomenon of psychological doubles has been known for a long time, and also that in popular culture there has been an extremely negative attitude towards it. Psychological double in practice - all the pros and cons
A meeting with a doppelganger brings death, which can be interpreted as the initial destruction of the personality and the subsequent death of the body. I think the story of Dr. Jekyll is about exactly the same thing. The set of moral values that you have may not coincide with your counterpart. Moving from one state to another, you retain the memory of what you did, and as a result, a psychological problem arises - a breakdown. But often such stories are associated with organic brain damage, diseases and the like. For a healthy person, creating temporary psychological doubles is an excellent way to achieve a change in the limitations that exist in his consciousness, psychological attitudes, even in the physical capabilities of the body. It sounds like some kind of shamanism that works great in practice. The main thing is not to get too carried away with this game and control the process. Below I will give the simplest examples of how psychological doubles can be used, although I prefer the term psychological guise.
Example of Routine Work There are many things in life that we don't like to do. They are not interesting to us, cause boredom, and so on. As a rule, these are routine things. It is very difficult to force yourself to do them. The psychological guise allows you to achieve such work, without negative emotions and working under pressure. For example, this method is recommended by Jurgen Wolf in the book “School of Literary Excellence”; he imagines that he is the superhero “Cleaner”. When he needs to sort out his desk, he enters this image - his character does not waste time on anything other than sorting out papers. Having imagined this image, Jürgen Wolf begins to disassemble his desk and ultimately spends less time on this action, but most importantly, it does not irritate him.
For my taste, this real-life example works, but it looks a little funny and artificial. Which of us thinks so picturesquely and stereotypedly? Few. Moreover, Wolf’s thinking is the thinking of a screenwriter writing for Hollywood; it does not suit us at all as a prototype. So what should we do? Construction of a psychological mask
There is no better material for the construction of your mask than yourself.
You know all your strengths and weaknesses, and you also know what exactly you don’t like to do. The vast majority of methods related to psychology or success stories, changes in consciousness, talk about how to achieve a permanent change in consciousness
.
In my opinion, this is overkill for most life situations, since we need a temporary structure that can be used as needed
. Creating a temporary structure does not require such constant effort, maintaining yourself in a certain tone and does not break your psychological attitudes. This is very important, this is a soft and most importantly temporary change that is completely under your control. For example, working with statistics always made me sad. A huge volume of numbers, a large number of sheets, only a peculiar person, which I am not, could love such work. Unfortunately, this work requires not only attentiveness and perseverance, but also attempts to find patterns. How to show creativity when you have to sit for a long time and look at monotonous columns of numbers? The solution is to construct a psychological mask. My alter ego for such a case is me, with a number of changes. In particular, I have constructed my mind in such a way that I enjoy finding similarities or patterns, as well as unusualness, in series of numbers. Everything that stands out from the general plan gives a surge of emotions, joy from the fact that I have found something new. When designing, I took as a basis my impressions of the emotions that an unexpected win in a casino evokes in me (strong impressions that are perfectly integrated into any image), as well as the feeling of completion upon completion of assembling a large puzzle. Two main emotions that are important, since I associate them with pleasure, and assembling a puzzle gives me the experience that in the end I will receive moral satisfaction, but for this I need to show perseverance. Someone does something similar, but uses different tricks - often called getting in the mood to work. It is very important to understand that once you have created such a psychological mask, which is based on your personal experience, you can take it out of the closet at any necessary time. That is, you will show the character traits that you already have only when you need to. Regardless of how you feel at the moment, you simply switch to the work that you need and do it well.
Among the little tricks - having done the work, you must remember to “turn off” your mask and return to normal. Some people need it, others, like me, don’t. Just a recommendation just in case of emergency.
It is possible that by now you have already developed an aversion to the “quackery” that I preach. Then you shouldn’t even try to put this into practice, it won’t work anyway. And you don't need it. If you think that something like this is possible, and you are ready to try, then create a psychological mask of a very simple configuration and see how it works for you. This is individual for each person. Don’t try to create a complex structure, choose one or two emotions and build on them, create an alter ego that will help you in solving routine tasks. Practice for a week or two. I'm sure you'll see it works. If this technique appeals to a large number of people, then in the next article I can tell you in more detail what else can be done with constructs and what useful tricks there are in this area. I hope that you were interested in reading this text, and that it made you think about the psychology of people and recall your life experiences.
Use fake name generators
The owners of many sites like their users to fill out as many fields as possible in their profiles and provide as much information about themselves as possible. If we want to create a realistic personality but save time, it makes sense to use automatic fake personality generators.
One of the best services of this kind is Fake Name Generator, which allows you to create personalities with specified characteristics by nationality and place of residence. By the way, although there are Russian first and last names in the set of options, it is impossible to select the Russian Federation, Ukraine or Belarus as the country of residence: obviously, the authors simply do not have enough information on the standards for displaying various types of data for these countries.
The Fake Name Generator site is remarkable in that it creates a ready-made virtual identity with a lot of different data, including a realistic-looking address with a zip code, a phone number that passes automated tests for authenticity, occupation, blood type, that actually works after activation, an e-mail that meets the standards payment card and social security numbers, height, weight, geographic coordinates, car make and even favorite color. You can precisely specify the age and region of the countries supported by the service.
The Fake Name Generator service is perfectly suited to study and test any online services that require detailed information about the user, without entering any real personal data.
"Strong" passport
There is also such a thing as a “strong” or “weak” passport. Strength is not determined by how many missiles a state has. And how many countries you can freely enter without visas.
The Japanese passport is considered the most powerful in the world, because it allows you to enter 190 countries. The weakest is the Afghan passport. There are only 30 countries.
“Weak” passports indicate problems in the state: civil wars, poverty, dictatorship, etc. Good homosapiens from other countries don’t want to see problematic dudes in their country. Unless they already died 3000 years ago.
For reference, a Russian passport allows you to travel to 116 countries, a Belarusian passport to 75. These are 51st and 69th places, respectively, next to their African brothers. I think it’s now clear why Pasha Durov did not regret shelling out 250K for a new Xiv.
