Creating Anonymous Accounts

[United Resource Connection]

United Resource Connection acknowledges and supports the right of individuals to participate anonymously in online communities. There are many situations in which anonymous accounts online are the best option. Here are a few examples:

1) an employee of an agency does not want their opinions in online forums to be confused as representing those of the agency for whom they work.
2) an individual with a mental illness wants to start a support group for others, and advertise in local online forums, but doesn’t want their identity known to the general public.
3) an employee of a mental health agency wants to start or participate in a dialog about systemic problems effecting the implementation of best practices of care, but fears reprisals from their employer if they do so.

There are many other examples, of course.

One of the ways in which we support the right to participate anonymously in online communities is by providing specific instructions on how to do so. Here’s how to create an anonymous account on United Resource Connection:

1) obtain a disposable email address. There are a number of providers of disposable email addresses, you can search online for them or use one of those listed here.
2) go through the process of creating a free account, using a pseudonym instead of your real name, and use your disposable email address to validate your account with us.
3) as soon as your account is activated, change your account password so that the next person using the disposable email address doesn’t have access to your account password.
4) don’t disclose identifying information in your online posts.

There are additional procedures required to use paid services anonymously online. These procedures are technically more complicated if your goal is to remain anonymous to the recipient of your payment. But if you don’t mind the service provider (the one getting paid) knowing who you are, that is, if you are just trying to remain anonymous to the general public, then the instructions above for creating anonymous accounts remain the same for paid service accounts here at United Resource Connection.

Free accounts on our Advisory Board are available at United Resource Connection as part of our commitment to the free speech rights that anonymity protects. We still reserve the right to delete any accounts that contain threats (to one’s self or others), hate content, splog or spam, or accounts that otherwise violate our current Terms of Service Agreement. It should also be noted that service providers can be forced by law in some cases to disclose technical details, including the identity of customers, if those details are known to the service provider.

The technologies, operations, and policies at United Resource Connection are open for peer commentary in these forums, we invite your open participation.

You can continuing reading about this topic and contribute to the discussion about it here: https://unitedresourceconnection.org/peer-review-forums/forums/topic/creating-anonymous-accounts/

[United Resource Connection]

This topic exists in both the “Operations” forum (here), and the “Policies” forum, here: https://unitedresourceconnection.org/peer-review-forums/forums/topic/creating-anonymous-accounts/. To keep everyone on the same page, please follow the link to keep up-to-date with the most recent discussion of this topic.

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