Why do so many people who I play not specify their country of origin or have profile pics?
For many different reasons, probably. I don’t know why other people do that, but I can tell you my own reasons…
About six years ago I didn’t have a Facebook account yet. A friend created one for me, because he thought I should have one… then he added a photo of me to the profile picture. I still use that same photo today. I never upload photos, because I just don’t care. My albums are all empty. I wouldn’t make it different here. As I said, I just don’t care. I guess I could upload some nice picture of something else other than me, but too lazy to search for something…
Other people may (and will) have different reasons. If I had to guess one, I’d say they didn’t spend enough time on OGS yet (do you add a profile picture to every single website you register? Or only to those you spend a reasonable amount of time?).
About the country, it took me a long time to put mine. I left it Unspecified until I was looking at the settings trying to find a way to change my rank and noticed I could change the country there, so I did.
2 Likes
What’s the point in adding this information?
1 Like
For some it might be more personal and therefore more enjoyable playing experience.
Also if you find out that your opponent is from the same country as you you can switch to you mother tongue and / or meet irl if you enjoy playing with them.
And for many it is easier to recognize a familiar face/picture rather than a C0mpl1c4td USER13name so you know you played this person already and can have a better conversation / game.
And if someone beats you by half a board it is a good info to start searching where they live so you could break their windows with go stones. 
4 Likes
Adam, I am not trolling you but for example, you picture is creepy. Seriously.
Maybe you do need help.
It’s just my face 
what’s so creepy about it?
I’m sure I do, no argument there
3 Likes
Either they don’t know how or can’t be arsed. The latter is probably more likely.
Privacy…
2 Likes
You must be new to the internet.
5 Likes
I like the fact that we are here as go player and nothing else. No useless country, no identity, just player that share the same passion.
Next to that when a game is nice with someone, i play again with him. And if we want to talk we talk.
3 Likes
That’s exactly the thing I am avoiding by not specifying my country and photo. I am here to enjoy the beauty of go, not to chit-chat.
So nice that this place accommodates so many different players, expectations, wishes 
1 Like
Well, nowadays everyone and his dog are collecting, processing, and storing forever any personal data they can get. So not providing any personal data when you are not required to becomes sane default behavior online.
In my case it has nothing to do with go in particular, I’m just becoming more paranoid with age. 
My DGS account was created long ago and still specifies my country and my real name, but my newer accounts do not.
Or you can find your opponent is from a neighboring country that your country is in conflict with and turn a go match into a political fight. 
I hope you’re using a good anonymizing service. And always using incognito mode with all caching fully disabled. And masking your user agent string. And carefully crafting your NoScript rules. You’re right to be paranoid, but the way most paranoia manifests itself is in completely useless ways. Your IP gives away a crazy amount of info, but in addition to that, seemingly normal things like allowing your browser to cache anything exposes you to virtually undetectable tracking methods. Your user agent string, combined with data about your system that most browsers make readily available also serves to come very close to uniquely identifying you solely based on that.
Just pointing out that there are much bigger things to worry about. In the end, I personally couldn’t be bothered to care. If someone wants info about me bad enough to sift through my largely average life, have at it. I prefer taking advantage of the conveniences made available by not worrying about such nigh avoidable things.
And still, you are not telling much about you in your profile.
I’m not trying to hide (I do use VPN and block 3rd party content in browser, but not for the anonymity sake). I just not running around the net telling everyone who I am and what I’m doing… like I used to some 15 years ago.