Patricia is not Patricia’s real name, and there’s a reason that we can’t take photos of her face nor mention the exact circumstances of her persecution. Despite the fact that she ran a thriving business back home, she’s had to shut it down and erase any mention of her entrepreneurial past on Facebook. She’s also had to close her personal social media accounts. There are two reasons that exposing her identity — or at least making it easy to figure out who she is — would be dangerous. Firstly, it could endanger her asylum case; the logic goes that a person with a public profile would not need much protection. (Many years ago, Freedom House had a client whose case was denied because the judge found the individual online; for that reason, going dark online is now required.) The second is that sharing any information about herself could put Patricia’s family and colleagues back home in danger. “We’ve had instances in the past — two of the worst days of my life — where a young man heard that his father was murdered trying to secure evidence for his case. In the other instance, a woman’s aunt was killed,” remembers Rogers.