I just explained this in a support ticket, may as well paste it here too for all your thrifty fuckers. 
Quote: You should know that's a recent development, and for a long time we basically did as you suggested and handled name changes on a case-by-case basis. The problem was that we really had no way of determining who 'needs' a name change and who doesn't. When it became common knowledge that we would change names for security reasons, suddenly everyone was "worried about the cops". We instituted the fee not to raise money (our primary means of revenue is through banner advertising) but rather to add an impartial element of self-selection to the name change process. Ie. either it's important enough to part with $10, or you probably don't need it. And I guess I should explain that the reason we discourage name changes in the first place is because it causes confusion among members and breaks things like the "ignore user", "view ratings" and "view posts" functionality. Not a big problem when it's rare, but if everyone starts changing their name then the repercussions would become more of an issue. We try to encourage our members to be mindful of what they post, and provide resources like the Security and Safety forum, so hopefully people don't end up in a situation where they're worried about their identity being compromised in the first place. I hope that makes sense, even if you still disagree with the policy.
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