By Victoria Woollaston For the past three years, Google has insisted anyone who uses its Google+ social network must register using their real name - a policy that extended to YouTube in 2013. However, the tech giant has now made a U-turn and will let users post using any username, which ultimately means they can post anonymously. Although Google claims the move has been made to simplify the process, it could lead to an increase in abusive trolling across its sites. Since 2011, Google has insisted Google+ uses register using their real name - a policy that extended to YouTube last year. However, the tech giant has made a U-turn and will now let users post using any username. This ultimately means they can post anonymously and could lead to a rise in abusive trolling (stock image pictured)
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In 2011, Google insisted all Google+ users registered using their real name
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One reason was to prevent commenters posting abuse anonymously
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A similar restriction was extended to YouTube last year
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Google has now removed all restrictions on what names can be used
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It could lead to abusive comments to increase on Google+ and YouTube
Over the past year, Google+ has steadily started letting +Page owners use any name of their choice, and let @placeholder users transfer their usernames into Google+.