achmad_the_arab-
For the most part I don’t know who these profiles are in real life. Every so often I figure out who someone is and so I let them know (just so that they don’t think they’re anonymous) but they usually deny it.
In one case a poster called me a name in a different thread (I’m not sure if it was meant to be complimentary or derogatory) but I never heard the term before. I then overheard a coworker referring to an old colleague with the same terminology and put two and two together. I informed him that his covers been blown (I didn’t tell him how I figured it out) and he denied it but the profile was immediately retired.
Joseph is a different story altogether. Given that the Frum, Yeshivish community is very small most posters who want to remain anonymous are careful not to let their guard down.
On a different forum I noticed that a poster had some close similarities to Jospeh and started monitoring the posts from both of them. After I was totally convinced I ran it by another poster who I was in contact with in real life and he thought it was solid. At one point he slipped and let his guard down and gave away enough information for me to figure out what his real name is. Of course this may have been intentional to throw people off- I’ll probably never know.
Also, I can’t even be sure that the Joseph that I tracked down is the same Jospeh who’s posting nowadays.