In 2022, gaming companies experienced 260% online attacks. The online environment isn’t always desirable and promising.
Protecting one’s identity in gaming becomes vital for personal safety and a more enjoyable gaming experience.
While often filled with competitive spirit, online gaming environments can also be breeding grounds for various risks, including cyberbullying, harassment, and privacy invasion.
Safeguard your privacy by concealing personal details like real names and locations. This blog will tell you how to hide your identity while playing games.
8 Tried and Tested Ways to Hide Your Identity While Playing Online Games
When playing online games, you risk losing your personal information if you do not take proper precautionary measures to hide your identity. There are various ways to perform this task effectively. Here are some of them.
1. Use a VPN
One of the effective and most commonly used ways of hiding your online identity is with the help of a virtual private network.
For instance, a VPN for Steam helps encrypt your IP address, which keeps your location, identity, and even other data hidden from others.
With the help of a reliable VPN, you can mask your identity and keep gaming through the internet without the risk of being discovered.
It especially comes in handy when playing restricted games in your region. For example, you can play Roblox with a VPN from anywhere.
2. Private Browsers
Even the browsers that you use play an important role in hiding or revealing your identity when you’re playing online.
If you want to keep your identity hidden, browsers like Chrome and Firefox will be useless because they gather data from you.
Plus, they also keep a check and make queries on your online activities. You can shift to privacy-focused browsers like Tor or Brave for online gaming.
3. Separate Email ID
Your email address is crucial if somebody wants to find your identity in online gaming. If you’re using your email that you also use for handling other business and is linked to a lot of your data, it can be problematic.
In order to keep your identity a secret, you need to create an email only made for such online gaming activities.
A disposable email is not connected to your other accounts, making it safer to use when playing online games.
4. Use a Fake Name
Another strategy that is most commonly used by players who want to keep their identity hidden in online gaming is using a pseudonym or a fake name. This helps create an extra layer of secrecy on your true identity and keeps others from discovering who you are.
5. Review Privacy Settings
Almost every game comes with a set of rules and privacy settings. Most people usually accept all of these without reviewing them or giving them any second thought.
This can create a lot of problems for you in the future. Agreeing to these privacy settings permits them to do everything mentioned in that list.
That’s why it’s imperative to review these privacy settings before accepting them and configure them so that they manage to gather the least bit of your personal information. This process can keep your identity under the rug without any issues.
6. Two Factor Authentication
You must take extra measures to level up your online security if you don’t want to risk your identity or personal details.
For that matter, two-factor authentication is a perfect way. Whenever there’s an option to set up an authentication process, go for the 2FA.
This way, even if the hacker has access to your password, he won’t be able to do much with it because, with the second verification process, there will be a getting-in for him.
7. Use a Password Manager
In most cases, hackers first try to figure out your password to gain access to your account. A weak password can put your identity at risk as hackers can easily get inside your account.
That’s why it is advisable to use a password manager to set passwords for your gaming accounts.
A password manager knows how to set up unique and strong passwords that are nearly impossible for anybody else to guess.
8. Stay Away from Chat Boxes
Apart from using various softwares to keep your identity hidden, you also need to play a manual role.
There’s no point in sharing your private thoughts or information with random strangers in the chat boxes of these online gaming sites.
You never know if you’re talking to a hacker or a friend. It’s best to avoid this risk and maintain a private personality.
Hackers also use these chat boxes for phishing attacks, which can cost you a lot in the future.
To avoid all these circumstances, you must avoid them as much as possible.
5 Essential Reasons to Hide Your Identity While Playing Online Games?
The online gaming world that’s so dear to you can also become deadly and dangerous due to numerous factors like jealousy of your competitors, evil plans of hackers, or people’s toxic ways of entertaining themselves by hurting others.
There are numerous reasons for hiding your identity in this virtual world. These reasons are enough to convince you about the dangers of revealing too much of yourself in online gaming, where trusting someone can become your biggest mistake.
1. Identity Theft
Did you know that the FTC received 5.7 million total fraud and identity theft reports from 2022 to 2023, 1.4 million of which were identity theft cases?
One of the chief reasons for keeping your personal information as secretive as possible while playing online gaming is identity theft.
Hackers use your information through chat functions to steal your data. That’s why you need to keep minimum interaction with strangers in the chat boxes to be on the safe side.
2. Doxing
Another reason to keep your identity hidden in online gaming is the doxing. Hackers post your details, like your residential address, in this scam.
The reasons behind doing so can vary, ranging from jealousy or revenge to having fun.
You don’t want random people or agencies invading your homes, do you? For that matter, keeping your personal information a secret is what you need.
3. Account Takeover
IT specialists advise using a different password or name for all your accounts. They even advise you to use a pseudonym.
It’s because if you use the same password and username for every account you create, even if one gets hacked, all the other ones go down with it.
Using a pseudonym and creating different passwords for different accounts can save you from losing all your essential data in the future.
4. Phishing Attacks
Another reason you keep your identity hidden when playing online games is the wide range of phishing attacks that can come your way if you reveal yourself too much in the chat section.
The more you engage with strangers on these online platforms, the more vulnerable you become.
These phishing attacks come in the form of links in these chats, and the moment you click on them, you’ll invite hell your way.
That’s why it’s best to avoid this mess by being private and only focusing on your game.
5. Cyber Bullying
Hiding your identity also means keeping yourself safe from cyberbullying, a norm in these online gaming sites.
You don’t want to go through the depression of being bullied. To avoid this mess, you need to keep a mask on, and you can only do that by keeping your identity a secret.
Safety is in the Secrecy
Hiding your identity while playing online games involves several key steps to safeguard your privacy.
From creating a pseudonymous username or gamer tag that doesn’t reveal personal information to avoiding sharing your real name, address, zip, phone number, or email address in-game chat or on your profile, you can try many ways of hiding your identity on these platforms.
You can even use a VPN to hide your IP address, location, and other sensitive information, making it harder for others to trace your identity.
These precautions help create a barrier between your gaming persona and real-life identity.
Remember, at times, safety is in secrecy!
