I don’t generally hand out free advice to wannabee hackers, viewing them as I do in the light of the prey, the loyal opposition, or alternatively the poachers who keep us gamekeepers employed.

However I shall pass on one small and inconsequential bit of advice which I learned from chatting with Det Sgt Chambers of Nottingham Constabulary back in 1988, and which I suspect will hold true even nowadays.

DS Chambers told me that the crackers – sorry, “T3H HAX0RZ” – who were most easily traced by the Police were the ones who persisted in using complex obvious pseudonyms like “NEUROMANCER” or “RINCEWIND” (to choose two popular nicks from the era).

Or for instance “TRINITY” or “ACID BURN”, for fans of marginally more recent lifestyle-hacking movies, rather than printed books.

He further told me that the biggest pain in the arse hacker to track was the one who went by the name “John Constantine”; nowadays Swamp Thing and Hellblazer are considerably better-known – so that one wouldn’t work any more – but things were made rather more interesting by having an apparently plausible human name to investigate.

So there’s your tip. If you want to be ‘1337, pick a totally mundane nick. Some of my colleagues may frown upon sharing this with you, but I reckon it’s an interesting observation of police procedure and will in any case largely be ignored because anonymity is a considerably less compelling concept to your average spotty nerd, than (for instance) Carrie-Anne Moss in a PVC catsuit.

Moreover it’ll save me FR0M HAV1NG to D3@L WI7H L337-sP3Ak, not to mention unimaginative “Morpheus” after “M0rpheus” after “Morph3us” after “M0rfeus”…

It gets tedious.