hackernewds 4 days ago

what sorts of problems do you imagine this causing?

1
tzs 4 days ago

The name is widely used as a placeholder. Here's how Wikipedia describes it [1]:

> John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the British and US-American legal system and aside generally in the United Kingdom and the United States when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed.

I'd imagine that could lead to some difficulties when someone really named Jane Doe has to deal with some system that uses that name as a placeholder. Similar to the way people whose surname is Null sometimes run into problems because of poorly written computer systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe