Is it unprofessional for a journal editor to be anonymous?

How should the editor's decision to stay anonymous be qualified? For example, was it

(un)ethical,

(un)professional,

(contrary to the) commonly accepted practice?

What does this tell us about the editor or the journal?

Or Option D: Likely the result of using editorial management software, with no particular agenda behind it.

There are many reasons why the template can be generic. For example, a purely practical one is that one editor might be handling your submission, but then hand it off to another editor if they think they've got more appropriate expertise, if they need to take leave, etc.

One's interaction with an editor isn't particularly a personal one. They are acting in their capacity as the editorial office of X Journal. And when it comes down to it, it's the Editor-in-Chief's decision that is the final one, regardless of who you worked with, so it's entirely reasonable for the journal to speak with their "voice".

So no, it's not particularly unprofessional, and it's definitely not unethical. For that matter, it's not even a departure from common practice - likely a good half of the journals I publish (field: Biomedicine) in don't necessarily disclose what editor is assigned to your paper.

(Due to some rearrangement of comments, etc., I'm rewriting a comment as an answer... :)

First, yes, as noted by others, on many occasions such emails are software-generated... stimulated by an on-line submission, without other human intervention. So it's not that anyone is trying to avoid revealing their identity.

At the same time, nevertheless, I myself do not find machine-generated "invitations" adequately motivating in most circumstances to get me to do volunteer work. My viewpoint is that if no human being is willing to take the trouble to invest at least their identity and a few moments for a small email, then I needn't feel an obligation to invest my (identity, even as "anonymous" reviewer, and) time.

A feature that helped me move down this path was crappy automated interfaces... (won't name names)... which tried to coerce my referee reports into a format that misrepresented my comments... and on other occasions didn't like the browser I use, etc. In particular, when dealing with the interface was a lot more trouble than carefully reading the paper? And there was no one to email about it?

But this did start me thinking about the whole arrangement. Docile free refereeing for for-profit large corporate entities upon the command of software is not the way I want to go.

Regarding 4 and 5 specifically: In my experience it is not common that one is informed about which editor is assigned. It may not even be the case that some editor is assigned (beyond the Editoe-in-Chief, the Managing Editior, the Editorial Office, etc).

If you want to know about this I think you could just ask, like: "Could you please let me know which editor will handle my paper, so that I know who to contact in case I need to communicate some information related to my submission."

I think it would be slightly unusual to do this for the reasons given above but I doubt it would be a problem either.

On the general subject, generally, I consider referring as a service to the community, as a service to the journal, as a service to the editor in this order.

I thus do not consider the identity of the particular editor as overly relevant as long as the authenticity and the seriousness of the request is guaranteed by other means (as appears to be the case).

Yes, if I get asked by somebody I know it will change the dynamic of the situation slightly. Yet, if anything I would consider giving much importance to this as potentially ethically problematic not the converse.

Finally, many mathematicians write reviews for the Mathematical Reviews/MathSciNet an entity run by a professional society the American Mathematical Society. In my experience as a reviewer, it is exceedingly rare to be in contact with any particular individual. This is not exactly like refereeing for a journal, but close enough. I thus wanted to bring it up as it feels relevant to the question if this is common and considered as professional (by scientists and mathematicians more specifically).