A security expert has criticised Google's stance on pseudonyms on its social network, claiming the hard line will damage privacy.
Google+ has been closing down accounts where people were using false names because it is against the company's community standards.
According to Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, the policy erodes privacy and shows Google to be acting like an official identity authority.
“By requiring people to only use their real names, unless they just happen to be a celebrity, they have eliminated the ability for people to be private in any meaningful way,” he said in a Sophos blog post.
“It's important to remember that it's a social network. Google will not be issuing passports,” he added.
According to Wisniewski, Google's solution for people who want to use the service under a pseudonym - to put that name in the Nicknames field - only makes matter worse because it links identities which people might prefer to keep separate.
“Google suggests your pseudonyms could go in the optional Nicknames field, which you can choose to make searchable and public,” he said.
“This solves Google's problem, but erodes privacy even further by associating your 'real' name with your pseudonym. I believe this is actually destructive to privacy, not helpful.”
Wisniewski said Google needed to stop bullying people into disclosing personal information or risk the social network failing while it was still in a testing stage.
