Anonymity is precious, but why? Why would anyone care that there information is put on the web for all to see? Okay, maybe people don’t want to have their credit card information or social security numbers readily available to the world. But why would anyone care if random people knew their birthday? After all, it could mean gifts! Well, even seemingly innocent information can have its price. Information links to information. Profiles can be made. A birthday here, a few likes and dislikes there, and a serious profile of who a particular person is can be made. Still, why does this matter? Have any enemies? Perhaps you don’t have any enemies now, but you will have some in the future. And you don’t want any enemies grabbing hold of your information even if the information is nothing more than your likes and dislikes. You don’t want past information to haunt you in the future.
Still not convinced? There’s a rather famous quote, which I just can’t find right now, by a king(?). He said, to paraphrase, “Allow a man to speak twenty words, and I’ll find a way to hang him seven times.” The fact is, there are people out there in influential positions who may not like what you have to say on the Internet. What you say could get you fired, and it could even prevent you from getting a job in the first place. In America, you (ideally) can’t be imprisoned for saying “offensive” things. Unfortunately, the first amendment doesn’t protect you from losing your job over poor word-choice. Perhaps, one day, the first amendment will no longer protect someone from being sent to prison for saying some words. Perhaps that day is already here. “Hate speech” laws are currently used to lengthen a person’s prison sentence. It’s probably only a matter of time before those laws can be used to send someone to jail. Terrifying to think about, but it is a possibility in America and a reality in other countries.
Here’s another, more trivial reason, why anonymity is important. When I say “trivial”, I mean it only in a relative sense of the word. Remember when I spoke of “building a profile” on someone? Profiles can be built and used in social engineering attacks. I once had a boss who was targeted by a couple of social engineers. The only thing they needed was the location of his Aikido dojo and, from there, they were able to grab information about his workplace, finances, methods of payment, his schedule, and, even, his personality. Information can be used to grab more information, so it’s best to limit the information you throw out into the world.
Another reason to remain anonymous on the net is targeted ads. Now this will seem really trivial (and not in the relative sense of the word), but is it trivial? After all, I’m sure some people love to have advertisements that match their interests targeted at them. It makes shopping much more convenient. But doesn’t companies having that kind of information about you pose some kind of threat to you? How businesses use that information really isn’t up to you. They may sell it, exploit it, or discard it on a whim.
Indeed, in recent years, Facebook, Google, and Amazon have become far more information hungry. They want more information about you than they once did. Real names are now required by Facebook and Google. Aliases will no longer be accepted. What about security questions? Aren’t those used just for user authentication? Think about what those questions ask: where were you born, what is your mother’s maiden name, where was your first job? Sounds to me like these popular websites want to build profiles on their users.
Still not convinced of anonymity's importance? How about a little social proof. In recent years, in response to information grabbing organizations and a renewed desire for privacy, new apps and services have sprung up from the void. DuckDuckGo, Whisper, Secret, Local Anonymous, proxy services, virtual privacy networks, the list goes on. As to whether these apps and services provide perfect anonymity is another issue. However, these apps and services rose out of a growing need people have. The need to keep there personal lives and information private, and the need to voice their honest opinions about controversial subjects.
All this considered, if you want to have some semblance of a life, you necessarily need to sacrifice some anonymity. They don’t allow anonymous people to sign up for bank accounts or to get hired at a job. Necessarily, you’ll need to give away some information. Does this mean that the treasures of anonymity are forever outside our reach? No, you can do a great deal to remain relatively anonymous. Anonymity, too, is a relative term. And there are relative degrees of anonymity. Additionally, you can be fairly anonymous on the Internet while not being anonymous in the company of friends and family.
I haven’t gone to extremes to protect my identity either. I’ve protected my information well enough to suit my purposes. Some things can be found out about me such as my name and whatever is put on this blog (good luck attaching my real name to this blog, suckers!), but that’s about it. Nothing too damning. And, like I mentioned before, perfect anonymity isn’t really achievable if you want to have some semblance of a life.
So, how do you remain fairly anonymous? It seems rather simple, and I’ve given some advice in the paragraphs above, but I want to give some explicit advice here. Most of this will seem obvious.
- When using web forums, don’t use your real name (use a cool sounding alias like L337_hacker or Bonobo the Chimpanzee)
- Use a throw-away email account
- Never send information to untrusted websites
- Use a proxy server when surfing the web
- Make sure the information you send over communication channels is encrypted
- Don’t give out your name, address, phone number, email address, backing information, etc. unless absolutely necessary
- And, above all, don’t put any more information, than necessary, online
How much anonymity should a person strive for? That’s up to you. I’m doing a great deal more these days to preserve my anonymity on the Internet and so are other folks. Still, more can still be done to protect ourselves from the electric eye.
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