It is possible to join this forum under a false name as no verification is required.
However I would hazard a guess that the occurrence is low.
Regarding the requirement for Paypal to have your mobile phone number, this is a component of two factor authentication designed to improve security. Many banks in the UK and France have introduced this - which is a pain if you have weak mobile phone reception.
I could say the same thing 
Just testing to see if the name change worked. I rather enjoy search engines finding the 100 plus more famous people with my name instead of myself.
You are really Lotboy47 and I claim my £25! 
I know the feeling, Cuthbert, old stick.
Back-along I was looking at the entries of a BBCi astro-photography competition and was amazed to find I’d been awarded a gong. I am a photographer but never done what would be classed as astro-photography, just the sun and moon.
Turns out there’s another Chris Nation, photographer, based in sunny Worthing. He’d won the gong. Astro is his speciality.
The Saachiart.com online gallery seems to go round hoovering up my pictures and bunging them on Google, for sale. I did sign up with them many years ago but they’re still plugging my stuff years since I added anything myself. That’s yer social media for you. Never had anybody buy anything, mind.
Here’s one I did earlier - not astro but there’s a heavenly body in it . PS: I don’t do Photoshop.
Although I have a relatively unusual first name & surname combination I have a younger & far more famous namesake so any search on my name only pulls up hits on his name.
Apologies for those of you who have thought that up to now you were interacting with an “English reality TV show personality, noted fashion photographer, author, spokesperson, filmmaker, and former model” as Wikipedia describes him.
Some Nigel Barkers are the ultimate in pathetic self-regarding pansy creeps… Yeurrgghhh! 
This site is not private, it is publicly visible to the entire internet. Google indexes public sites which is why you will find search results relating to your posts here.
Which brings us neatly back to my original point. Do we really want our comments laid out for scrutiny by anybody with a computer? Anybody who can take things out of context and reinterpret them for their own purposes?
I post on other fora which operate exclusively on pen-names and they are certainly no more abusive than this one, it’s all a matter of self-control and prompt action by monitors when needed.
Therefore I would argue that as the site is open to the public, then our privacy really ought to be protected in one way or another.
The choice is entirely yours. currently we operate a real name policy on an open forum. If you would like me to close your account and delete your data please let me know.
I was reading the forum for ages before I finally joined up and posted and so was never under any illusion that it was private or closed…
Well before I moved to Brittany on a wing and a prayer I was searching all manner of things about life in France and 9 times out of 10 I came across Survive France…
One of my daughters was searching education not so long back as they’re desperate to move here to be close to me…she said to me “are you on survive France because I just saw a photo of one of your Collies on there” lol…
It’s entirely up to the individual to decide how much of themselves that they want to disclose.
Only the foolish would be unable to grasp that where the modern information world stands on privacy. There is no public embargo on anything you share on-line.
And it’s a widespread fallacy that you have much of a private life, if indeed you have any. People who know me know more about me than ever I would dare to solicit from them even if I were blind drunk, and certainly more than I think I know about myself, most of which is hopelessly wrong.
Fortunately social convention generally discourages bean-spilling. If everyone did it there would no illusion of ‘privacy’. 
I think those in charge are selling themselves short. It’s not the fact that full names are shown which creates the (generally) civilised atmosphere here, it’s the thoughtful, open, even-handed and fair moderation.
This is so true. I’m totally against having to put our names up on line as it goes against all the ‘safe internet use’ protocols as I understand them. No other forum I use insists on real names and they go between rude people and very polite people, it is the overall forum etiquitte (and moderators and admins responses) that decides on this.
I was also given the choice of putting my name or trotting on and as I feel this is one of the most useful France sites I decided that I would suck it up and comply. I don’t agree, as internet privacy is very important and I don’t think that putting our real names covers the basic safe internet rules, however even though I don’t agree it is the owners choice to insist on it. I use a number of forums (of all different subjects - cloth nappies to chickens!) and this is the only one that insists on names. I don’t think it changes anything in terms of behaviour. People will be arses if they want to regardless of their names, it is only moderation / administration that changes the vibe / acceptable content of any forum. I was also given the choice to leave when I questioned the ‘rules’ but I’d like to use the site as I feel it is one of the best French forums that we have at the moment. Luckily in France my maiden name is the legal name even if it is not my ‘nom de usage’ so I feel I’m protecting my privacy while complying with Cat and James rules, men perhaps don’t have the same options to comply with the rules here and protect their own internet privacy.
As opposed to elsewhere, eh, Stevie? 
Other forums, some less so, are available. 
There are 2 problems with this discussion:
On the first problem - my experience has very definitely been that anonymity lowers the tone of discussion - particularly in areas like politics and economics - and Tory’s last comment about her experience of forums from ‘cloth nappies to chickens’ perhaps reveals the reason for the different experiences we bring. The answer lies - as always - in looking for some evidence beyond anecdote. This study, for example, found that although anonymity had no direct effect, it did indeed lower the tone of discussions: ‘users’ conformity to an aggressive social norm of commenting is stronger in an anonymous environment’.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305116664220
On the second problem - which is the general one of giant internet corporations harvesting data and storing it on servers in America, selling it, etc - I agree it should be curtailed - but this is a problem to be addressed through political action, and our behaviour as commercial consumers (by not using Google or other corporations whose business model depends on collecting data, by ad blocks, etc).
On the giant internet corporations and privacy issue, by the way, there’s some good advice in this thread…
Beware what you search for. l could only find my obituary!
My grandma used to get the local paper every Friday and the first thing she did was to check the obituaries just to make sure she wasn’t on the list !
It would help, James, if you could answer the original question.
Why, when registering to use the site, do you ask people for a ‘nom-de-plume’ as well as their actual name?
Then you show both on postings.
Why?
