I have anxiety and hard time asking questions because I am concerned that I can be identified

Question

This is not my first question about privacy at Meta. In the recent year, I got more paranoid, but the following question where a user asked something, and literally, everyone can find out who he is, returned my fear of being exposed. I am so afraid that people can do even with me, that I hide my real name. What should I do to release this stress, since my first point of joining here is to liberate myself from fear? Or maybe SE is not for me?

Answer 1

where a user asked something, and literally, everyone can find out who he is

Yes, but this user clearly gives away identifying information. That’s their own responsibility.

what should I do to release this stress since my first point of joining here is to liberate myself from fear?

You can:

• Avoid an account name (or any personal details) that bear a connection to you.

• Make an account for the sole purpose of asking your question. This way you avoid that somebody can deduce your identity from your other posts on the site. Note that if you do this, you must avoid any interaction between your two accounts, such as voting for each other (see this Meta post for details).

• After you drafted your post, check it as follows: Imagine yourself in the position of a stranger reading the post, and see if it’s possible to discover the identity of the poster with the information from the question and what’s generally available on the Internet. Even better: Ask somebody you trust to do this for you.

• Remove all irrelevant details that are irrelevant to the question or swap them to obfuscate your identity. For example, swap the gender of a person involved if you are sure that gender does not pertain to the question. Note that this is a bit risky, as you may not know which details are actually relevant to the question.

• Ask somebody you trust to write (not post) your question for you to avoid being identifiable by your writing style.

Or maybe SE is not for me?

As long as you use a separate account for your question, I would say that you are as safe from identification as anywhere else on the public Internet.