Do not display the usernames that hold a specific badge

Other thoughts were along the lines of forcing a title on all users, of “Guest” for example, but that could just be changed by them to any of the badge-titles they hold. I don’t think I can prevent people from changing their Title.

I’m looking for a way for guests and members to identify each other as such (ie. a badge) but without leaking the number of Extra Special Members that we have.

Would there be any other innovative solutions or workarounds?

Could I do something clever with “User Fields”?

Maybe create a user field called “Status”, have it visible on their profile, but not editable by them. Could I then update this “status” user field automatically by an API call? (we fire an api call to add them to a Group)