No. I used to, but it got too complicated, and I gave up on it. It got too complicated because I started doing many things that were more public - music, writing - and have a lot of friends outside my geographic sphere. It began to feel so convoluted to separate my identities that it became exhausting. At the same time, I recognized that someone with good search skills and a strong desire to find out about me would be able to do it regardless of my imagined secrecy. I think our mid-20th century concept of 'privacy' is dead in the water; in the future, I think privacy will have to be extended to others as a social custom, not expected or earned through behavior.

I don't go to the trouble of integrating my own identity everywhere for everyone - if I had my own personal website, I might - but I also don't hide it. I like living a more integrated life. I don't have to remember where I've said what or who knows me by my real name and who knows me by my handle. And I've really had no negative consequences to date.

To me it's been part of a process of trying to 'own' my whole life, as in be accountable for all of it, even if that's sometimes uncomfortable.

It depends on what you do for a living, I think. I wouldn't want my clients to be able to search out my comments on MeFi or MeCha or AskMe.

Because of my job I have to keep work/life separate. But I prefer to do that anyway.

I don't really keep my online identity separate from my real life one, but I don't make an effort to integrate them, either. On lots of message boards, I post under my real name, but on some I still use muddgirl. It's sort of a mish-mash.

I'm pretty much the same as muddgirl. Some separation naturally happens because none of my "made in real life" friends post to any of the message boards I do. (My friends seem to be either linux-worshipping computer nerds who spend all their time on technical forums or only go online to email and download porn - I'm one of the few middle-ground users.) The only thing I don't do is accept my students as friends on facebook.

I'm not especially worried about people I work for finding out about my online ramblings... but I do keep a lot of livejournal stuff friends-only, and all my family photos are similarly protected.

I haven't been to any meetups, but that's mainly because my other half isn't in favour of it.

I try to - like miko says it's an illusion - but I do try. The husband is a high school teacher, and we had a bad experience in the past of a student finding me, figuring out who I was, and hacking/faking stuff that I posted on a message board and passing it around school. Brrrr. Even without the hacking factor, I wouldn't want Mr. Baby's students seeing stuff I've posted. This is also why The Husband, although lovely and handsome, is completely absent from my flickr account.

I post under my real (er, real stage) name only in the local theatre blog, because it's like, free publicity, and I'm very polite and stand behind my words. Here or anywhere else, though, stuff could be used "against" me in that realm too, I guess.

I've decided not to do the holiday card exchange, too, because I'm just leery. It saddens me, I really wanted to do it, but I guess I vet people before giving out contact information.

as far as I know this cannot be linked to my activity on metafilter and here

From Mefi comments more technically-competent people than I have made, I think the majority of people who think they have successfully separated their real and online are overestimating the difficulty of linking the two using only Google and common sense.

To test if this is true, I did an experiment. altolinguistic, I'm not trying to freak you out here (and I won't post any details), but it took me under a minute to go from your Mefi presence to your real name, work site and profiles on work-related forums. If you then look up the owner of your domain name, you get what I'm guessing is your home address. I don't intend to make a habit of this, but it was certainly eye-opening for me just how quick and easy it was to go from an abstract online persona to the real you, with Google alone (and the free WHOIS service for domain names). (Email me if you want to check I'm not making this up)

What matthewr said. I keep things separate, but it'd be pretty easy to connect 'em. Not as easy as with some people, maybe, but plenty easy.

I don't keep my online/offline presence regulated for the reasons matthewr pointed out. It is ridiculously easy (if you're willing and you know how) to find out information about anyone. And, as a web developer/freelancer, I'm also rather lazy in having a work email account, having separated websites for my portfolio and blog and blah blah blah. I'm easily googleable, anyone could find out where I live, so why fight it? I choose to be a person who defines a large aspect of their life in the online world. As long as that keeps up, my online/offline presence will always be intertwined and part of the key lime pie that is my reality.

Like essexjan, I'm in a profession where being very visible online (particularly in a red leather corset) could be a very bad idea. But I don't have separate personalities, I just try to keep the same boundaries that I would and did have in "real" life before I had much of an on-line life. My tweets are protected, most of my flickr pics are limited access, my public blog makes almost no reference to my personal life, real name or any of my online handles.

Like Miko, I mostly just try to 'own' my whole life, by which I mean: I try not to put my foot in my mouth, fly off the handle or overshare. Sometimes I screw up. Unfortunately, there's no delete key and people can still find stupid comments I've made places. It's just like life: people have some pretty embarrassing photos of me; I've filed some public documents that are poorly written and I'm in the phone book. If someone wants to, he can find me and be cruel, harassing or embarrassing to me. I try to take it on faith that no-one would want to.

I do, sort of- my test is, if you google my real name, and not too much weird stuff comes up, that's fine (although even that's a crapshoot- there is some stuff out there I'd much rather not be there, but eh, what can ya do! Trouble with growing up on the internet!)

matthewr, I thought someone might try that. I'm not particularly freaked out, or even surprised, and to be honest it doesn't bother me much that people on here know who I am IRL but I'd rather my clients can't instantly see via a quick googling that I have been known to advise people on their sex lives on metafilter - not that they'd care, probably. (the clients, that is). I attempt to think before I speak wherever I am, so am not too worried.

No, not really.

This is also why The Husband, although lovely and handsome, is completely absent from my flickr account.

You could always just change the viewing permissions...

chuckdarwin, I don't trust the viewing permissions entirely. The "private" appears to work, but I've had way more views on my friends only pics than I have friends, and they don't show views on private photos, obviously.

Trouble with growing up on the internet!)

Gosh, I never thought of that. My heart goes out to you young'uns who have always had the internet. You have given me something else to be thankful for this holiday, TPS: That the angst-ridden, grandiose musings and misadventures of my teenage years are safely confined to bound journals on my bookshelf, not encoded in digital splendor for future generations to unearth. At least everything I've said on the internet, I've said as an adult (at least in chronological age).

However, having grown up with it, you will all understand that aspect of things better, too, and probably be a bit more forgiving of older postings.

I'm pretty sure flickr's permissions protocols are solid. How would one circumvent them?

I used to keep things very secret, 'Dabitch' posted on websites and about ads on domain names owned by a totally made up persona who lived at the exact address of a church in Stockholm that I think looks cool (Homage to Blues Brothers!). I'm fairly certain that there was no ability to connect the dots back then. I kind of had to, since I was a young ad pup looking for work at agencies I might berate on my site. I was even in an office once where the creative director was reading one of my rants and yelled "who wrote this!? What a pretentious dick!" and my copywriter in the room (who knew it was me) nearly choked to death on his own giggles. Soon after that I 'came out', letting my real name be the domain owner, admitting in the trade press that it was me, but not putting huge "about" pages or photos on me on the site. Two or three years later, ad-blogs popped up like mushrooms all over the web and it seemed that those who got the most attention from old press were the ones with clearly outlined people behind the blog, so I came out a little more I guess, now people even address me by first name (though for years I found that a little creepy for some reason). Now I'm even thinking of legally adding the Dabitch to my real name (since Dabitch is a real name)....

So of course, now I have a quiet login on most of my favorite watering holes for the times I want to reply to, say an AskMefi with information I deem too private to be under the dabitch nome de plume. Back to square one, I guess. ;) Admittedly, I don't use them often. Too confusing.

I realize it's not foolproof, but I do keep this persona and my 'real' identity separate. I'm just not sure what might come back to haunt me in 5, 10, 20 years, especially if I'm out looking for a job. If I ever become wealthy, then I might change my mind.

By the way, I googled my real name and my persona, and nothing came up. At least for now.

I keep it separate to the extent of having a separate email account for theora55, and not sharing that name with most of my RL community. Most of my online community of friends don't know my RL identity. I don't want J. Random Stalker to find me easily. Many women, including me, have been stalked, not too scarily in my case, but enough to make me cautious. And I wouldn't want some members of my family to google up everything I've said about them. Given the permanence and scope of the web, I'd rather not be too open.

I've given my address for deadtreemail, and I've been photographed at meetups, so I know I'm not actually anonymous.

I've given up on keeping them separate.

Almost everywhere across the internet, I'm drezdn and in my profiles it's usually linked to my real name. I try to make a point of never discussing my work or using my wife's name but other than that I'm pretty open.

It was a little disconcerting though when I sold something on CL recently and the person asked me if I wrote restaurant reviews (which I haven't done in an at least a year).

What muddgirl said.

I'm pretty sure flickr's permissions protocols are solid. How would one circumvent them?

Their security measures aren't public so there is no way of knowing. It's quite possible an exploit will appear either of the Flickr service itself or via individual phishing.

I gave up on having an online identity a long time ago. My RL name is on my profile here, and I'm very easily Google-able.

The first time someone "publically" linked to my LJ was when I was the Fansview Personality of the week four years ago. That gave me a bit of anxiety, but I overcame it by locking down a lot of entries and being choosy about what I post.

Since I'm going to start looking for a new job soon, though, I'm wondering how wise this was. I'm trying to get admin assistant work, and I hope that someone doesn't mind that their admin assistant used to publish comics porn... o.o

but it took me under a minute to go from your Mefi presence to your real name

It's much harder to do the same thing in reverse if someone's made even minimal efforts to keep things separate. So whereas whois is easy and free, doing it backwards (ie finding out what domains a person owns) is still a specialist task.

A few days after I finally decided to register drezdn.com, Someone posted on Mefi about wanting to change their name to Dresden, the resulting "Do you want to be associated with a tragedy?" responses did give me pause.

cillit bang: that's certainly my bigger concern. If someone I only know via the internet (metafilter or last.fm or some such) finds out who I am and wants to hang out (sure) or ask legal advice (I probably won't provide it) or stalk me (hello Chicago's finest!), or even share embarrassing photos of me with my real name (see! she wore a costume with no pants on Halloween 1998), I'm not terribly concerned (well, maybe about the stalking). But if someone I work with (or, god forbid, for) wants to dig dirt on me on the internet, that would worry me (hello pantsless Halloween pictures and some random spewing about liability). I never really thought about it being harder to do, but it's nice to know it's harder to find out what domains I own if you know me personally.

So whereas whois is easy and free, doing it backwards (ie finding out what domains a person owns) is still a specialist task.

Exactly. I'm more concerned about real life finding internet life than the other way around. And given that non-computer people don't understand stuff like "WHOIS", I feel pretty goood.

My mom found us all on Twitter when my brother in law explained to her what it was. That was weird and it prompted me to make my tweets .

Now Mom is on Twitter. That's even weirder. It's nice, in the end, though because 1) it forces me to tone down the moping on Twitter; 2) I'm no longer required to update Mom one what my sister is doing when my sister can't be bothered to call her mother; and 3) I like my mom, a lot.

That would be "make my tweets private"

So whereas whois is easy and free, doing it backwards (ie finding out what domains a person owns) is still a specialist task.

Not really, or at least not for long. Already if you do a whois on a domain some sites will give you the other domains the person owns for free or a small fee. So you'll have to do more to keep other domains a secret. Or else anyone can find out a person owns example.com and xxxexample.com.

As someone who actually got my job through Metafilter, I don't sound very convincing when I say I try to keep things at least somewhat separate.

I know any determined person can figure out whatever they want to about me. But I try not to make it easy for them. My full name is absolutely distinctive, so I'm cautious about using it, and I don't generally link my various accounts and identities with each other.

I consider my online life part of my real life. I don't mind folks knowing who I am, in either locale. I suppose I would be a bit surprised if one of my students piped up one day and called me "pips," but I tell them all kinds of stories about my life when we write and talk about books together anyway. In my case, I figure nobody, real or pixel, cares all that much. (Maybe it's a sign I need to be more interesting.)

Separatists rule! I keep my on-line life pretty much separate from real life, but less so the reverse. Kind of. I will usually put my real name in profiles, so I guess people can find me if they want, but I don't talk about on-line stuff in real life. It's my world, damn it and I don't want to share with anyone!

What Miko said.

*sigh*
My dad added me as a friend on Facebook last week.