I wasn't talking about something as extreme basic as providing a name... I believe the one who would turn it and think that 'providing real name' is the actual average joe.
I wasn't responding to you, I was responding to Opcode. If you note my response history, there are only a handful of people on this forum I respond directly to. No offense. But if you think I am an average joe, then I must claim some success with my methodologies already.
Anyway.. Back to the general topic theme;
All of this depends on the threat actors you are attempting to avoid. Avoidance of real name, and searchable real name isn't generally to avoid state sponsored actors. It's very helpful to avoid stalking, doxxing, and low-mid level hackers and less well funded state actors.
Has nobody on the forums been a victim or near victim to stalking, harassment or doxxing? I have countless stories of where a limited footprint has prevented 'issues'. For example a creep at my wife's work attempted to stalk her, but then quickly realized she has a near-zero footprint on the internet. He ended up stalking the WRONG lady a couple of cities away from what the police investigation report indicated..
As for privacy practices increasing your surface area, we're long past that as being an issue.. A decade ago, you'd stand out. Now? Not so much.. The reason is simple, hundreds of millions of people are using privacy tools/extensions/services/products now. I've read estimates of almost 150,000,000 people using VPN's as one example.
I'm aware of all of the other technology, stylography, fingerprinting (in all it's forms) and the variety of projects to tap local and regional fiber and data centers, etc. We're not talking avoidance of that moreso than avoidance of corporations, data mining firms and weirdos. If you want to avoid well funded state actors you can, but expect to have to educate yourself, spend some money and be far more diligent.
In terms of products, I think it's more about 'lessoning' the amount of information you bleed off as a basic mitigation method. An antivirus product is an intimate product on your systems, so you probably should pay more attention to who/what/when/where in terms of your AV then say, your notepad taking app or your pedometer.
