Hated Guest, I'm happy you like your new home here at Mudcat. But you are a very recent arrival, and don't know or fully understand this long standing problem in this forum. As to your paranoia about Max "having our numbers" well, for any ISP to mess with a poster at the request of someone like Max, Max would have to prove some kind of very serious history of wrongdoing. Pissing people off with your writing style and voicing strong opinions doesn't exactly qualify as serious wrongdoing.

I, and a number of other posters who use this forum with a fair amount of frequency, have been posting for years without using a handle. It doesn't bother us or most members one whit. It just bothers a small, obnoxiously vocal minority of the members, as Lepus Rex has pointed out.

I appreciate your advice, but I'm quite content with my identity here being the default setting.