Okay, no, I have to say something here:
Second, the over 40 crowd started using the internet in the early days when keeping things like names, ages, life status and the like was paramount in keeping yourself safe online. A good portion have never stopped the habit.
Where are you all getting this shit? This is not the only place I've seen this misconception, which couldn't be further from the truth.
When people say "oh, old people come from an Internet where you had to HIDE ALL PERSONAL INFORMATION", they are talking about the safety advice given in the 2000s, to children. Small children. Children who are extremely fucking far from being 40 years old today.
But the Internet of the 90s and earlier was a completely different beast.
There was no concept of Internet safety on the early Internet. There were no children on the early Internet. You still largely got access through your place of study or work—consumer ISPs were still new. Danger online came from hackers, from viruses. And they didn't want your personal data—because, like, why would they? Unless they could use it to get in somewhere by pretending to be you, and nobody lived their life worrying about that.
You did not hide your name on the early Internet. There was no need. Some people went by aliases, but not most. You didn't hide your location—most of what you did was probably tagged with your email address, which identified you personally. There were entire directories online where you could look people up, complete with personal data, right down to their office—and that wasn't illicit in any way, it was how things functioned. Domain registries still listed phone numbers, names and addresses for their contacts—you can hide those details today, but you couldn't always.
You wanted to be able to contact people, if there was a problem. You wanted to be able to find people, and to be found. You probably knew most people, at least by reputation. I ran an international mail server that was accessible only via my listed telephone number.
As for hiding your age? What kind of weirdo shit is that? Who would even care?
Please don't talk about "the early Internet" as if it was a hive of paranoia. It wasn't, and those of us who were there rarely think that way.
