What should be used for anonymous usernames?
More often than not, the best way to hide is to simply blend in with the crowds -- this also encompasses one's choice for a username. It is relatively simple to make a single throwaway account -- just come up with a username, and off you go -- however, if one makes throwaway accounts often, the task of thinking of a unique, and non-identifiable username can become a challenge. I would argue that poeple would often resort to using a pattern employing small changes for all subsequent usernames. Such patterns can be identified to a specific user if all users have their own unique patterns.
How can one reliably generate many unique-but-normal, and non-pattern-identifiable usernames?
Yup that's where my username came from
(👁 ͜ʖ👁)
👁️ 👁️
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It does.
What the fuck. I never knew Bitwarden had a username gen until I went to checked to see if it did, and I immediately notice it
It’s fairly recent, and I don’t think they advertise it. It appeared one day in the generator. 😆
I don’t think it’s particularly good, but it’s something!
Must be a new feature. I developed a client for BW 6 months ago, and this was definitely not a thing.
It’s been in the Chrome extension for at least a year.
Must be client side only. TIL
It's really not all that different from a passphrase generator
Well, the same thing, but just not part of the BW server API is all.
It's not a public project. It was based on their docs to be compliant though, much the same as the vaultwarden project.
$ diceware -n2
UnfixableHappy
$
Use a password generator in a password manager for the username AND password. Bitwarden is free.
Use a temporary email for email signups. getnada.com works fine, but so do many others.
Skiff is great. They even generate an @random.maskmy.id so you can type anything before @. It's nothing new but great since you can set 5 static aliases also.
And your username has enlightened me that the fediverse lets us have spaces in our usernames (?)
Boost doesn't seem to support display names other than on the profile page. It does, however, tell me that your account was created 6th of june 1923 :p
I like the ambiguity.
Or for even more work, use a password manager to generate a super secure password, and use that password as your username
Random nicknames are not recommended, they are unique identifiers, it is better to use nicknames of famous people or movies, video games, etc., because it makes it difficult to find them on the web, especially if different ones are used on each site.
this is a really good idea
Go to reddit, pick a username from the front page, use that. Any searching into your use of it will lead to that front page post and its reposts on click mills.
There's user name generators. Even fantasy name generators too so it's not a weird jumble of letters and numbers like a password.
I let Bitwarden generate my usernames for throwaway accounts. I don't care if my username can be identified as Bitwarden-generated.
Good usernames are Google, Yahoo or Barrelroll, this is fun when someone searches for you by nickname
Pick a random book from your shelf.
Repeat for as many words you like. Discard words you don’t like. Slam the words you like together.
Examples:
I see a pattern here...
I don't create anon accounts nearly as much as you say you do, but when I do I a correct-horse generator, and just pick the first two words and mash them together. It has never produced a conflict yet.
keepass2android's password generator can generate these on mobile, and there are several for the command line.
I, too, was immediately going to recommend correct horse. It is random and it works.
English word + four numbers
That's what you think, Michael
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Or if you want to be really fancy, you can just pick one of the Fantasy name generators: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/
Draknolf Frozen-Fur, a Nord from Skyrim has a nice ring to it.
Try random real words until you hit one that's free! Those are the most satisfying usernames anyway imo haha
Do random word generators exist?
ETA: https://randomwordgenerator.com/
They do. You can use passphrase generator of any pw manager. Bitwarden has a nice one
Interesting. I also found the url above.
$ pwgen 8 100
I normally use the lastpass username generator, though fair warning, they will try to sell you lastpass.
You're still using lastpass?
No, I don't use lastpass at all. Just the username generator.
Ohh, bitwarden has one also.
Does it? As far as I can tell, the only option is for a random word, which isn't really the same.
Yeh it's just random word and 4 numbers if you ask for the numbers.
Yeah, the lastpass one does random letters with options such as being pronouncable.
That's good, I just wouldn't give lastpass the privilege of taking out my trash at this point.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/O0lS4vff_TM#t=17s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I usually just use a fake name generator to create a name and use it as a username this takes care of my inability to think of random usernames, birth date and other stuff that most websites these days ask. And it also makes me look like another dumb idiot and not a l33t haxor.
I use SimpleLogin for email alias, and username usually has to be associated with email address. So I just use whatever SimpleLogin generates for me
May not be popular….
But Apple can use hide my email, similar to Bitwarden.
So there’s another option
Model: Wizard-Vicuna-13B-Uncensored (running locally).
Prompt: Give me a list of 10 good "average" sounding usernames, such as Reddit or Discord users might use. Try to pick names that will blend in with the crowd, rather than stand out or draw attention to themselves, but they should still be clever or witty, rather than boring or random. Please do NOT use actual reddit users names. Come up with original names. Blend in some random words, if you have to.
Response: Okay, here are ten good "average" sounding usernames that I came up with by blending some random words with some average usernames:
My neural-ass brain smells pattern
They don't seem good at all, long and weird
I don't know what text the LLM sniffed, but those aren't average at all
This is a good example of hallucination, both by the AI and by OP. The first and third word of each line is a synonym for average.
One time I asked chatgpt to come up with a list of random street addresses, and the first couple were fine, then one was like "123 cherry street", then each following address was like "777 apple lane" "888 banana ave" and so on. Which was wrong but also pretty charming I thought.
It misunderstood your question.