Is anonymity online good or bad?
 

Not a simple issue of yes or no but maybe it's an important discussion. People don't feel safe using their real identity for various reasons. But what are some valid reasons?

Anonymity breeds contempt? Anonymity provides some safety from the very dangerous masses on the internet.

e.g. look up that article about the guy that was streaming his competitive gameplay, apparently his competition figured out where he lived, they called the local sheriff with a made-up story and the swat team raided his house with guns in faces. The guy had kids in the house. His 22 yr old was woken up from sleep and handcuffed at gun point.

People should have the option of safely using their real identities should they choose to. They should also have the option of reliably staying anonymous, should they choose to, until a court says otherwise.

FWIW, I've been here under my real identity for around a decade.

Someone was doing live-streamed competitive gaming in his late middle ages? No, I didn't hear about that particular incident, but it's cool that people that age are doing that.

I think it has it's place. And I think that anyone looking for a fight, stands to find one.

That story itself may be made up, or the victim in that story may have helped circumstances to occur by the way they acted online.

My personal style is to be anonymous for purposes of avoiding pestering.

Since I'm not a gamer or someone who participates in group, active, online activities, I can't really speak towards the extremity of that particular situation or similar ones.

Things get out of hand, I'd rather say, "OK, sorry, we don't agree. Done." And move on and not be a continual antagonizing factor to the situation.

Self included, but for less time, I think 2009 was when I signed up.

It's a common enough occurrence that that really doesn't matter if that particular story is made up. Here's a recent local one:

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Coqu...987/story.html

If I couldn't interact anonymously (well, as much as one can, I don't mean free from law enforcement tracking me down)* online then I wouldn't interact online at all.
There's no way I want a throw-away remark I once made about, for example, Microsoft Products or religion to cost me a job interview because the prospective employer can google (short example, I think the reader can understand what I mean?).
I may also like to comment upon issues affecting a company or companies I have some dealings with and would not want to either be mistaken for a representative of such or, be seeing to bring them into disrepute, or otherwise causing issues.
I find online chat with real identities, Facebook and its ilk, odd. I email my real-life friends rather than publish out conversations on the internet.

*I do think that kind of anonymity is important for some though remembering that in some countries even a light criticism of the government or using forbidden words can lead to imprisonment or worse.

I see this from a number of different and distinct angles:

(1) Yes, you have the right to use a pen-name or a straw-man. Samuel Clemens used "Mark Twain."

(2) Yes, you are responsible for what you do and say on-line, just as off-line. It is not-okay to attempt to conceal your identity for the purpose of committing a crime, or any other kind of tort.

(3) The "carriers in due course" of things like e-mail, chat messages, or even "internet traffic in general" should not have the prerogative to eavesdrop, not even for "marketing purposes." They should not be able to assemble a dossier.

(4) You should be "routinely" using encryption a great deal more than you do now. If anyone serves you with a search warrant or a subpoena about it, "don't be stupid." But otherwise, as Mr. Zimmerman said, "it's nobody's business but yours" (and Alice's, or Bob's). Our present security is seriously weakened, not strengthened, by our "promiscuous" sharing of things that ought not be shared. Knowledge is Power, for good or for ill.

I think that a clear line should be drawn, IMO. Privacy is good, anonymity is bad.

For example, you can attain a good level of privacy using various firefox addons that block scripts, remove ads and web bugs, and control cookies. There are also simple measures like not putting your real name online, or if you have to don't post anything that you wouldn't say to anyone and everyone under that identity. You can attain a good level of anonymity using Tor, although this is debatable. Either way, many illegal activities are carried out on Tor, and unfortunately many of them persist. Doing something illegal with only privacy-enabling addons will probably get you caught much faster.

So, my question is, what do you want/need ?

I choose privacy, it is enough. All I care about is not being tracked by ad companies and sites. If anyone does anything illegal they will be caught. Having said that, sometimes anonymity is necessary, but this is a sign that you are living in a totalitarian regime when you actually need it, and it might be better just to leave the country.

I agree with metaschima.

I always use my own identity on line. But I am not registered to any so-called "social" network (this including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Linkedin...) an do not use online games.

I realize that real anonymity (that can't be broken) is very hard to maintain if not impossible even with tor, and that what I post on the Internet probably will be accessible to others during a _very_ long time, so I just try to avoid posting something that I could regret having broadcasted later.

About privacy: I tend not to share publicly any personal information that can't easily be found anyway. I must admit that I am bit lazy and until now used neither encryption nor authentication methods for email and files signing. I intend to do that in the future as one of the things that worry me is identity stealing.

I think there are at least two (sort-of three) kinds of anonymity being talked about here:
1) a) Being able to post under a pseudonym but being completely known to the site administrator. b)Being able to post under a pseudonym that even a site administrator would find it hard (or impossible) to link to a real identity.
2) Being able to post under a pseudonym that law enforcement would find it hard (or impossible) to link to a real identity.
I actually believe that all kinds are necessary in this world but I require at least 1a if not 1b in order to post online.
I see this as the same as going to the pub -- I can say what I like without it being a matter of public record and don't have to tell anybody anything about me I don't want to reveal. I choose not to wear my work ID badge at the pub and choose not to wear it online either. That's because there are some people in the pub who I don't want knowing my real name and employer -- same goes for online for various reasons.
I can go to the pub and say "My boss is an a***." and that's fine and I want that ability online also. I can also say "I think such and such a religious view is balderdash" in the pub without it being published across the world with my name attached and want that ability online also.
It's not that I don't stand by my beliefs or that I post anything particularly controversial -- just that one never knows when even a real-world conversation that's not published internationally forever can cause issues.

The game player demographic is much older than most people think.

Many spend their time looking for fights, definitely.

All too real. Search for streaming gamer raided. 1000's witnessed it because he was live streaming.

And you think it's okay for a swat team to raid someone based on how someone acted online?
With weapons live and in your family's face?

Maybe I misunderstand your comment.

One thing additionally, sort of a blanket reply. Using enryption and that is good for preventing the other cafe patrons sniffing your passwords, etc. But with the prevalence of "the cloud", traffic going to/from "the cloud" is unencrypted on the way through, the data is all out there in unencrypted form. Sad state of affairs I'd say.

Search sanctioned MITM.

MITM = man in the middle

I've been largely anonymous on the internet for 24 years. And for all of you who do not think I have the right to be that way, consider the following...

"A fifth of IT executives admitted they have rejected applicants because of what they have posted on social media." - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...dia-sites.html

Career Builder statistics 2014: http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/a...12%2F31%2F2014

I've already been fired once because I expressed distaste at the idea of converting to Mormonism. (Pamphlets were left at my desk regularly, etc.) The last thing I want is to be disqualified as an applicant because I don't like some genre of music or favor some political candidate. I have every right to remain anonymous unless there is evidence of a crime.

Yes and no
 

I rarely engage tools to browse anonymous. I hate tracking and recording that some sites and companies do, but understand that they use that to finance services that I access for free, that otherwise would cost me money. I allow, but control as well as I can, the extent to which they can capture my data.

I allow and support the use of tools and features to allow more anonymous browsing. I correspond occasionally with people who, due to local politics, would be executed if their activity (quite normal and reasonable anywhere else in the world) were tracked to a physical location. I do not support tyranny or oppression.

Freedom, and the that includes freedom to perform your own risk evaluation and engage the internet in a way you consider safe and secure, has always been a standard and expectation for internet access from the bitnet days. That expectation is not always reasonable or easy to meet everywhere in the world. (Even in the USA, see NSA articles from the last 7 years.)

The question, as stated, has no answer. Anonymity is a feature of certain modes of operation or tools to secure and restrict traffic to make your location and identity difficult to detect. Good or bad is determined by usage and purpose, not the word itself.

Ask a better question.

I think that privacy and anonymity are not necessarily the same thing.

Unfortunately, far too many persons use anonymity to enable vile and hate-full behavior, the sort of behavior that we fortunately almost never see here at LQ. That is why I almost never read comments to news stories.

When my local rag banned anonymous comments (a commenter to opinion pieces must have an account and a login), the quality of discourse went up stunningly.

Here's a report from the field. http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...nline-comments

As for privacy, it's already dead. Just ask Ashley Madison.

They aren't... but anonymity greatly increases privacy with far less difficulty. There are some forms of privacy that are not achievable short of remaining anonymous. For instance, you mentioned Ashley Madison...

A person who signed up for an email account with their real name, and that account is tied to everything, including their bank account, is now compromised.

A person who signed up for an anonymous email account. One that they only login to from a private session, or better yet a virtual hosted or public web browser, and only use for Ashley Madison is not compromised, or at least not compromised short of an ISP hack or federal warrant. If they used a public VPN tunnel on top of that and did a few other things, they may well be untracable.

Personally, I think that website was a hilariously stupid idea and was asking to become a target. But, the fact is, people will end up victims of identity theft over that hack, and that's not okay. Getting dumped or divorced over that may be deserved to some, that's really between the parties involved as far as I am concerned, but identity and/or financial theft is probably undeserved.

The real problem is: total private-sector corporate surveillance
 

The real problem here is one that is far more insidious ... and terrifying in its implications.

When we use "the telephone," we are (supposed to be ...) protected by "anti-wiretapping" laws. When we talk to one another, the telephone company is not supposed to be tape-recording every conversation and using it to build up a complete dossier of everything that we do.

We ought not forget the historic power of metadata: when the Nazis wanted to round-up all the Jews, one primary way that they found them was through telephone call records. If you were known to be a Jew, everyone that you called became suspected of being a Jew, also. (No matter what you said to them.)

Today, we supply not only metadata about ourselves, but "100% of content," to private corporations and therefore also to their employees, who might well not be on our own national soil. Any "app" can, for example, collect minute-by-minute information of your precise geo-location without your knowledge or consent. All of the content of every text-message, tweet, post, or e-mail that you send is collected and analyzed ... forever.

We have utterly no idea what that data is, who has it, where it is, or what is being done with it.

It can be said quite truthfully that, among other things, we are handing this vast information to our future military enemies, who will be enabled to use this information without the use of warships and armies. They will be able to strike as individuals against individuals, even in the sanctum-sanctorum of "hearth and home."

We are also completely carefree in the use of this thing called "the cloud," in which we trust data centers (and their operators) to be "one of us," just because electric power and labor is a little cheaper over there.

The American L-1 non-immigrant visa program allows "foreign" companies to set up here, pay "foreign" workers "foreign" wages and keep them under "foreign" conditions. What do these men and women, who damn-well know that they are being cruelly taken advantage of, have access to?

When the worst of 18th and 19th-century capitalist labor relations, intersects 21st century technology and a wall-to-wall international data network ... :eek: what will happen next? :eek:

We should be thinking about that, and writing laws about that. But, we're not.

No. I don't condone prank swatting for any reason.

Of course we're not, that requires community focus...

Oh, when you mention that thing, prepare to be assailed by dumdums. People immediately spout "Godwin's Law! Godwin's Law!" like they've completely destroyed you with "total pwnage". The problem is that they're regurgitating what they assume to be an intractable argument of logical fallacy on your part. But, they're too stupid or short sighted to realize that Godwin's Law is an internet meme, created as an experiment. Later, someone at some point claimed was a logical argument (argument from fallacy) when it is not. Godwin himself stated, "Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy." Finally, the "law" itself stands contrary to established wisdom, "those that do not remember the past are often doomed to repeat it," and more or less claims that any comparison to WWII Germany is hyperbole and/or fallacy. If that where the case, any examination (incl. academic) of those historical events is effectively useless because any comparison made to them is automatically a failed argument, which obviously cannot be true.

Totalitarian regimes, including those whose only "borders" are ideology, create the need for privacy and anonymity. Obviously if one resides in a truly enlightened society of tolerance and liberty that reveres Free Speech there is no need for either. It is further utterly obvious that in the global community that is the Internet this condition does not exist even to the point of dubious legal action and even death threats and warrants.

Somewhat less obvious is that such a Utopian community does not exist anywhere. AFAIK there is not one single community that actually has a completely level playing field where every individual is truly equal under the law. Joke lists are made of antiquated and ridiculous laws still on the books. We have the luxury and false sense of security necessary to laugh at them only because they are rarely enforced even though their very existence can create a condition where anyone and everyone is arrestable at any time. Often, so-called community standards and beliefs trump just laws. Even the presumption of innocence is often thrown out the window. This is not paranoia nor "making mountains out of molehills" as laws are made and enforced by fallible human beings and many innocent lives are destroyed, people jailed and even executed, ultimately only for the crime of being different and this happens even in what most consider to be the most enlightened and just systems on the planet.

Consider that in the swat invasion linked earlier in this thread all it took was what amounts to a prank call from someone, apparently not routinely and carefully screened, absent any hard evidence whatsoever, to have loaded guns pointed at ones' family by nervous, adrenaline fueled agents of the law whose training is weighted heavily for enforcement and often appallingly weak in the Law they supposedly serve.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not condemning law makers or law enforcement only recognizing the complexity and difficulty in governance plagued by the immense gulf between ideals and reality, between attitude and behaviour. Even though I refuse to join Facebook and many other social media, I'm certain it is still rather easy to discover who I am and where I reside because I have not been proactive in "hiding my tracks". In this forum alone my profile listed on the upper left of this very post reveals considerable true information in this regard and I joined gmail very early on to have a "permanent" email address, regardless of ISP. We all manage to embrace a considerable number of contradictions and unbalanced decisions. I can only hope that this utterly new and global form of communication, will, over time, evolve into at least a more level playing field than could previously exist on a global level, though I likely will be long dead before it does. Deep change at the human level runs exceedingly slow, and ultimately that is "where the rubber meets the road".

We all need privacy and anonymity. Only the degree differs and that degree is not cast in stone but in constant flux.

My primary fear is of the promiscuous sharing of data ... in the private sector, not guv'mint.

Government agencies tasked with national security at least have a notion of "TOP SECRETs," and with good reason: they don't want you to realize how much of your money they're spending! ;)

I referred to the Nazi use of telephone records only because it is a historical fact, although in this case it was a (soon to be) government that was doing it. No one dreamed they were betraying their friends by calling them.

We don't know what data is being shared ... we don't know where it is ... we don't know who has it ... we haven't even paused to consider what can be done with it.

And we didn't really consent to it. (We wouldn't even know what we are consenting to.)

We've never, in all of human history, been served anything remotely like this. GPS, a global high speed data network, computers on your wrist. Everything bent toward one purpose: data gathering. Your car (look carefully at the little black round knob just below the windshield) has a tiny camera pointing at you. Your car, too, is "on line." Did you know that? Do you want that? Can you turn it off? (No.)

In the private sector, all bets are off. And, I'm afraid, not everyone looks upon this as "marketing data." I wish we could expunge war from human nature and from human society, but we can't. If a "new and novel way" of doing war presents itself, then "new and novel war" will eventually come. And it won't be fought with warships and armies, because it won't have to be.

We're the ones who are tasked with security for our employers and our clients, and we're the ones who say things like "security is a process" and "trust, but verify." But, in this case, we seem to be the ones who are silent. This risk is not hard to recognize.

How are SWATtings an argument for anonymity? It's anonymity that allows them to happen.

Inappropriate training (and para-militarization of) law enforcement officers is a separate issue from online anonymity. "When given a huge hammer, everything becomes a nail."

We must remember also that the military-industrial complex saw a huge(!) market opportunity when "terrorism" could be equated as "war at home." The opportunity for quick and easy secret ca$h was enormous, and they promptly availed themselves of it. (It was also a great way to get rid of armored equipment that the military didn't want.)

As great a thing as the internet is there are way too many devils nowadays using it for criminal and malicious purposes!! If I had my way these bad people would be spending a lot of time locked up in prison!!

FWIW not criticizing you.
The fact that it's considered a prank should be very, very disturbing. From what little I know about the millions of ridiculous laws on the books, I would guess there to be several felonies involved.

With the sheriff's blatant disregard for due process being near the top. The use of caller id spoofing with criminal intent. ( I assume they spoofed their callerid when they called the sheriff)

The sheriff showed extreme neglect doing what he did and should be held responsible. Thankfully no one was hurt. But being raided by armed men in swat gear leaves a lasting impression. Hardly a prank.

One thing to note, very few people wonder why google gives away everything for free*. Well they do think a little bit when you tell them that it's free because "you and your data" are for sale. Can you imagine what you could do with just the stock symbol lookups alone?



*lot of others are free too, yahoo, facebook, reddit, imgur, youtube, etc., etc.

Only a fifth admitted it but 100% do it.

Actually when you engage tools to browse anonymous you're setting yourself apart from the herd. From a fingerprinting perspective (I mean browser fingerprint) you are much easier to track. You've now just said "Don't track me, I don't want to be tracked, nothing to see here, move along."

This is difficult to do, maybe impossible without doing things that are illegal. Whoever controls the physical network can find out anything. See "Prism".

My post started with:
"Not a simple issue of yes or no but maybe it's an important discussion."


Ok.

Some people use fame and power to enable vile and hate-full behavior.

Moderating comments takes a lot of work. If someone's not arguing the topic and instead engaging in personal attacks, the post should get deleted. Requiring login reduces moderation workload.


I am unclear how anonymity or privacy comes into play here. His privacy was violated because he trusted his data to idiots. He wasn't anonymous or trying to be apparently. Or maybe the point is that he would have benefitted from being anonymous. I would agree with that.

Maybe you said this for dramatic effect. But we do know the "what"(1). We do know the "who"(2). We do know the "where"(3). We do know the "intent"(what is being done with it)(4).

1) pretty much everything, health records, financial, personal, online, txt, voice, games, power usage, water usage, buying habits

2) "corporations" hand-in-hand with govt. (i.e. fascism)

3) "data centers" are everywhere in so. cal. there's one called the ziggurat (speling?)

4) anything and everything they want to do with it, too bad if you don't like it

I don't happen to agree with "#2" especially with regard to "hand-in-hand with government ... fascism." I simply think that we aren't thinking, at all, about any negative implications of all this stuff that we are presently doing.

We seem to be thinking of "the Internet" as a Utopia ... i.e. not occupied by actual humans, who are wot to do everything that history teaches us that humans have historically done.

But, today, "top-secret guv'mint agencies" do not hold an exclusive on "Knowledge Is Power." Even though they used to control it fairly-absolutely, today they have no hold on it at all. "Who's got the information?" Everybody! "Is it protected or encrypted?" No!

"Hey! Why're you asking these damned-fool questions? Can't you see we're trying to have an IPO here?!"

:rolleyes:

Let the record show that, on September 11, 2001, there was a strategy for "dealing with terrorist attacks on New York City." The command-center was in ... this building. (Do not overlook the implications of what can be seen to be happening on the roof, seconds before the entire building drops quite-neatly into its own footprint. A building is "blown" from the inside out.)

The Mayor and a bunch of other officials should have been in there when one final batch of explosives went off, and one more tall building dropped in free-fall into its own footprint. (A demolition is impossible to mistake when you see it ... including "when it goes wrong," as with The Landmark hotel in that video.)

We're playing with fire ... in ways that have never before existed in all of human history, and in so doing we are leaving our society disastrously exposed. Not everyone in our Internet Utopia thinks as we might wish them to. We can't change this, but we certainly can plan for it.

That would be illegal in most places outside of the US. I gotta say I never understood why the US treats employees with such contempt.

As for the discussion about anonymity and privacy, it's one of those things where I find it hard to draw the line somewhere that's just right. I too have had issues with people looking up my name in google and finding things I had written but in my case it was not anything that would have been of any interest to most employers. Still, it made sure that I began being very careful with what I wrote online under anything that was directly tied to my name.

I think a lack of anonymity would prevent pretty much all the trolls on the internet. It would also be disastrous for those that really need it though (for example, whistleblowers). I'm not sure if there's an easy way to strike balance to be perfectly honest but I do know that I would like a way of holding people who abuse anonymity accountable. Just not sure of a way to do that that doesn't harm those that actually need it.

It's illegal in the U.S. too.

Good to hear, but from what I understand of things like "right to work" laws it seems like employees there have very little protection. Thus I wouldn't have been surprised if what he said was legal there too.

Right to work laws here are specifically worded so that they are not an exemption from illegal forms of discrimination. However, some forms of discrimination, like religion (or lack thereof) in my case, are more difficult to prove than discrimination based on race, sex or orientation. The other ones off the top of my head that are hard to prove are discrimination based on non-physical handicaps and age, or at least those are the ones I last heard a lawyer mention.

Of course, it's also next to impossible to prove, or even know, that you were turned down for an interview, for example, due to something posted online. I know where I work one of the managers used to look people up on Facebook when he had their CVs -- he wasn't the type to discriminate (I would have heard something mentioned) and he largely did it "for fun" but it really brought it back to me how careful you have to be.

I once hired someone because they didn't have a Facebook profile, nor a LinkedIn page. :eek:

People like to think that they're a lot more interesting than they really are. The country song, "Let's Talk About Me!" comes to mind.

And, when out to dinner, say, you want the other people at table to actually, y'know, be there. That's becoming very rare these days. You're sharing your supper with a little glowing screen. Attempts at conversation are useless.

Some further thinking on my part on the original subject:

Anonymity is good if you wish to use it to protect yourself, and you're not doing anything illegal.

Anonymity is not good if you wish to use it to in order to do something illegal.

One could argue that those statements might have been written "illegal/immoral", and I thought about that, but everyone is different and has different levels of morality and I don't wish to excessively discuss those various levels. (Having just opened that can of worms ...)

The opposite also happens. I have made Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and filled them in, but I don't post on them. I never intended to make these, but many employers seem to want them to exist at least. You definitely have to tread carefully with them, you cannot really erase what you post. Thus, I don't post anything. I may post updates on a few status changes, but that's it.

What is your answer to #2?

The question was "The who" as-in who is using the data.

While there are a multitude of historical reasons to show the figure of the alleged holocaust is not as it appears, such as the fact Hitler was a Jew and the grandson of Lord Rothschild, welcome to the novus ordem seclorem. Privacy does not suit a global agenda. This historical note appears in the purges of bolshevik communism, the Khymer Rouge, the Mao tse Dung(head)-era of China, the various south American despots, ad infenitum. Privacy is a safeguard against despotic behavior, so of course despots attempt to destroy, to pursue, to overtake any bastion of freedom.
Anomimity was used by Franklin as "Silence Dogood" just as the secret police of Jewish bolsheviks to murder about ten million Christians and millions more.

"We are also completely carefree in the use of this thing called "the cloud," in which we trust data centers (and their operators) to be "one of us," just because electric power and labor is a little cheaper over there."
Many of the requests of Big Daddy Fed'ral Gub'ment are met with a "yes" to turn over private information; Google has a rate of 90.
Dropbox also Google practically would own what you do in their cloud services were it not for
intellectual property laws.
I'm actively considering private email like Hush or such because of how insecure the free email clients are.

Laws are written by paid hacks. You cannot cure a gout-addled arm by injecting truth serum into it.