Lownumba: I agree with you. I for one prefer to remain as anonymous as possible.
While hosting the SI MDA Thread (at the time one of the most popular boards on SI receiving 200 to 400 posts per day), my life and my family's lives were threatened, not on SI but in a manner that alarmed me and frightened my wife
There are plenty of nutcases on these boards, more than enough reason in and of itself to want to remain anonymous.
Bob Z, worked at keeping his identity low key and I did not know who he was until the Wall Street Journal did a peace on him and they approached my alias for comments regarding SI in general. And in all fairness, owning an online business like SI and iHub requires you to reveal who you are, just as owning a Broker Dealer does. And guys like Donald Trump are spotlight hounds, he loves the lights. Heck, until Ken recently “outted” himself to jump into the spotlight regarding OCS, I had no idea who he was and I first came across his alias in 1998 on SI. A iHub Advance Search using "scordo" in all the available database ranges 2005 (pre outting), 2004, 2003 and earlier searching all public posts returned a "no results".
Speaking of wanting to remain anonymous, shortly after 9/11 and shortly after the Enron scandal began to break, I began the process of targeting a couple of East Coast Italian business owners for ERISA regulations violations among other criminal activities that financially harmed their employees and for conspiring to defraud their vendors and their money factoring company. My repeated calls to the Dallas Texas FBI office were met with no response. I couldn't get through to the White Collar Squad or anyone else for that matter. Supposedly they were too busy following terrorist leads and dealing with the Enron scandal to even answer the phone or return phone calls.
Finally a female FBI agent took one of my calls, but she was supposedly not part of the investigative group or something. She took a few notes and said she would have someone from the White Collar Squad call me. When I asked for her name for my phone long (I always keep contemporaneous notes) she refused and said that no one at the bureau was giving out their names due to security precautions. My jaw dropped. It seems even the FBI wanted to remain anonymous...LOL
No one from the Dallas FBI office returned my call, after a few weeks I gave up on the FBI. I had to go over their heads and contacted the DOB and DOJ directly. Even then, it took pitting both agencies against one another to get the ball rolling.
I will not go into all my activities, but both of the business owners eventually lost their companies, had court rulings in their favor reversed and both have been reduced to bankruptcy court and even then extra effort managed to get bankruptcy court rulings in their favor reversed. To say these scoundrels are unhappy with yours truly would be an understatement.
This was not my first quest for justice, but may just have marked my last. When ever I am out in public, I glance over my shoulders regularly.
While it is more than obvious many folks on these message boards are not who they pretend, there are other “good” reasons for wanting to remain as anonymous as possible on these message boards.
Regards,
LG
