I would like to start using my real name on my StackOverflow profile. However, it's linked to at least two dozen other StackExchange accounts, and I'd really rather it weren't.

It appears that accounts are no longer unlinkable, by design. Moreover, Nick Craver says that it is "really not feasible" to unlink accounts anymore.

Assuming that I am set on not being linked to the other sites (which I am), what are my options? I can see the following:

  • Request my profile to be deleted on every SE site with which I don't want to be associated.
  • Manually delete the posts I don't like to be easily seen (yes, moderators still see them, but that's acceptable).
  • Give up on the idea of using my real name.

The former two are obviously detrimental to SE. The last one is highly discouraging and basically means that I no longer feel like contributing to SO at all, since I don't feel I get the credit.

One could say I should start a new profile, however it would take many hundreds of hours of investment to make it respectable, and until then I'd feel at least somewhat embarrassed about linking to it.

Any other ideas?


This post suggests I could ask for my attribution to be removed - something that was also mentioned in an answer that has since disappeared. This could work for me assuming support personnel won't balk at a list of a few dozen posts I might like unlinked.

I have to wonder though; if there are technical means to unlink my contributions, is it really so infeasible to relink them to a different account, automatically and without human intervention? The ability to unlink like this would help a very small minority of users, but keep in mind that those users who need this are actually affected in a rather major way. It might not feel important to someone who isn't in this situation, but trust me, this causes me much more distress than any old random bug could.

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I'd like to use my real name but cannot for several reasons... Out of sheer curiousity, what are the reasons ? – Bhuvan Rikka 웃 Oct 4 '12 at 12:18
You can change your username, no? – nhahtdh Oct 4 '12 at 12:21
@nhahtdh - it's the fact that the accounts on other sites are linked to his SO profile that's the issue. – ChrisF Oct 4 '12 at 12:23
Ah, I see that he only wants to use real name on SO and remain anon for other sites. – nhahtdh Oct 4 '12 at 12:25
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You can start brand new account with different OpenID provider. You will lose your past contribution, but you won't be linked in any way to your existing accounts. As for deleting your posts that's not an option - see here. If user delete his own (good) posts, the community will simply undelete them. – Sha Wiz Dow Ard Oct 4 '12 at 12:41
The only user rep SO seems to care about is the integer score you rack up over time. You're talking about a different kind of rep (real world reputation) whose existence I've never seen SO even acknowledge. – Chris Gerken Oct 4 '12 at 16:09

1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Yeah, unfortunately we can't unlink accounts anymore.

However, we can reassociate posts with a new account. For example, if you were to create a separate account for Stack Overflow, we could move your questions and answers over to it for you. This would not preserve the votes you cast on your old account, comments, edits, etc. but your Q&A contributions and reputation from those would be intact.

Disassociating posts is also an option, as you mentioned.

Feel free to email me (the address is in my profile) and we can talk specifics.

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