Noticed: The Privacy Arms Race

Charlotte Kaye, who went to the Brearley School in Manhattan, did not take any chances. To avoid detection, Ms. Kaye, now a freshman at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, said she and others began changing their names on Facebook beginning in their junior year of high school.

New spellings are standard: Amy is now Aim E, and Ms. Kaye became Charlotte K. A nickname will also do. At the Ramaz School in Manhattan, Amanda Uziel changed her Facebook name to Uzi Shmuzi. Puns and wordplay are held in higher esteem.

At the Collegiate School in Manhattan, Al Isin Wonderland is also known as Albert F. Mendia, a senior; at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, Audri Augenbraum, a senior, is Audri Eyebrows, the translation of her German surname. And at the Spence School in Manhattan, Haley Markbreiter, a senior, is Haley Go Lightly.

At the Fieldston School in the Bronx, a class on Tolstoy resulted in some students adding Russian patronymics like -ovich and -ovna to their names.

• via nytimes.com

There’s clearly a latent demand for students to manage their academic and personal identities. Look for a mandatory facebook profile url field on next year’s college applications.