Anonymity

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Anonymity is derived from the greek word ανωνυμία, meaning without a name or name-less. In colloquial use, the term typically refers to a person, and often means that the personal identity, or personally identifiable information of that person is not known.

More strictly, and in reference to an arbitrary element (e.g. a human, an object, a computer), within a well-defined set (called the "anonymity set"), "anonymity" of that element refers to the property of that element of not being identifiable within this set. If it is not identifiable, then the element is said to be "anonymous".

An example: Suppose that only Alice, Bob, and Carol have the keys to a bank safe and that, one day, the contents of the safe are missing (without the lock being violated). Without any additional information, we do not know for sure whether it was Alice, Bob or Carol that opened the safe; the perpetrator remains anonymous. In particular, each of the elements in {Alice, Bob, Carol} has a 1/3 chance of being the perpetrator. However, as long as none of them has been identified as being the perpetrator with 100% certaintly, we can say that the perpetrator remains anonymous.

Anonymity is not an absolute. That is, the degree of anonymity one enjoys may vary. In the above example, if Carol has no plausible alibi at the time of the perpetration, then we may deduce that it must have been either Alice or Bob who opened the safe. That is, the probability of the elements {Alice, Bob, Carol} of being the perpetrator is now 1/2, 1/2, and 0 respectively. This clearly amounts to a reduction of the perpetrator's anonymity (i.e. although the perpetrator still remains anonymous, it is now more likely than before that (s)he is either Alice or Bob).

The term "anonymous message" typically refers to message (which is, for example, transmitted over some form of network) that does not carry any information about its sender and its intended recipient. It is therefore unclear if multiple such messages have been sent by the same sender or if they have the same intended recipient.

Sometimes it is desired that a person can establish a long-term relationship (such as a reputation) with some other entity, without his/her personal identity being disclosed to that entity. In this case, it may be useful for the person to establish a unique identifier, called a pseudonym, with the other entity. Examples of pseudonyms are nicknames, credit card numbers, student numbers, bank account numbers, IP addresses. A pseudonym enables the other entity to link different messages from the same person and, thereby, the maintenance of a long-term relationship. Although typically pseudonyms do not contain personally identifying information, communication that is based on pseudonyms is often not classified as "anonymous", but as "pseudonymous" instead. Indeed, in some contexts, anonymity and pseudonymity are separate concepts.

However, in other contexts what matters is that both anonymity and pseudonymity are concepts that are, among other things, concerned with hiding a person's legal identity. In such contexts people may not distinguish between anonymity and pseudonymity.

The problem of determining whether or not the identity of a communication partner is the same as one previously encountered is the problem of authentication.

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Means of obtaining anonymity

Anonymity is a result of not having identifying characteristics (such as a name or description of physical appearance) disclosed. This can occur from a lack of interest in learning the nature of such characteristics, or through intentional efforts to hide these characteristics. An example of the former would include a brief encounter with a stranger, when learning the other person's name is not deemed necessary. An example of the latter would include someone hiding behind clothing that covers identifying features like hair color, scars, or tattoos, in order to avoid identification.

In some cases, anonymity is reached unintentionally, as is often the case with victims of crimes or war battles, when a body is discovered in such a state that the physical features used to identify someone are no longer present. Anonymity is not always found in such morbid situations, however. As an example, a winner of a lottery jackpot is anonymous (one of however many play the lottery) until that person turns in the winning lottery ticket. Many acts of charity are performed anonymously, as well, as benefactors do not wish, for whatever reason, to be acknowledged for their action.

There are many reasons why a person might choose to obscure their identity and become anonymous. Several of these reasons are legal and legitimate - someone, for example, who feels threatened by someone else might attempt to hide from the threat behind various means of anonymity. There are also many illegal reasons to hide behind anonymity. Criminals typically try to keep themselves anonymous either to conceal the fact that a crime has been committed, or to avoid capture.

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Anonymity and social situations

Anonymity may reduce the accountability one perceives to have for his actions, and removes the impact these actions might otherwise have on his reputation. This can have dramatic effects, both useful and harmful.

In conversational settings, anonymity may allow people to reveal personal history and feelings without fear of later embarrassment. Electronic conversational media can provide physical isolation, in addition to anonymity. This prevents physical retaliation for remarks, and prevents negative or taboo behavior or discussion from tarnishing the reputation of the speaker. This can be beneficial when discussing very private matters, or taboo subjects or expressing views or revealing facts which may put someone in physical, financial, or legal danger (such as illegal activity, or unpopular or outlawed political views).

With few perceived negative consequences, anonymous or semi-anonymous forums often provide a soapbox for disruptive conversational behavior. Some people label those who do this online as Internet trolls.

Relative anonymity is often enjoyed in large crowds. Different people have different psychological and philosophical reactions to this development, especially as a modern phenomenon. This anonymity is an important factor in crowd psychology.

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Anonymity, commerce, and crime

Anonymous commercial transactions can protect the privacy of consumers. Some consumers prefer to use cash when buying everyday goods (like groceries or tools), to prevent sellers from aggregating information or soliciting them in the future. (Credit cards are linked to a person's name, and can be used to discover other information, such as postal address, phone number, etc.) When purchasing taboo good and services, anonymity makes many potential consumers more comfortable with or more willing to engage in the transaction. Many loyalty programs use cards which personally identify the consumer engaging in each transaction (possibly for later solicitation, or for redemption or security purposes), or which act as a numerical pseudonym, for use in data mining.

Anonymity can also be used as a protection against legal prosecution. For example, when committing a robbery, many criminals will obscure their faces to avoid identification. In organized crime, groups of criminals may collaborate on a certain project without revealing to each other their names or other personally identifiable information. The anonymous purchase of a gun or knife to be used in a crime helps prevent linking an abandoned weapon to the identity of the perpetrator.

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Issues facing the anonymous

Attempts at anonymity are not always met with support from society. There is a trend in society to mistrust someone who makes an effort to maintain their anonymity. This is often summed up in the statement, "You wouldn't want to stay anonymous unless you had something to hide." The implication is that there is no legitimate reason to obscure one's identity from the world as a whole.

Anonymity sometimes clashes with the policies and procedures of governments or private organizations. In the United States, disclosure of identity is required to be able to vote. In airports in most countries, passengers are not allowed to board flights unless they have identified themselves to some sort of airline or transportation security personnel, typically in the form of the presentation of an identification card.

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Referring to the anonymous

When it is necessary to refer to someone who is anonymous, it is typically necessary to create a type of pseudo-identification for that person. In literature, the most common way to state that the identity of an author is unknown is to refer to them as simply "Anonymous." This is usually the case with older texts in which the author is long dead and unable to claim authorship of a work. When the work claims to be that of some famous author— a common practice in Christian literature— the pseudonymous author is identified as "Pseudo-", as in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an author claiming—and long believed—to be Dionysius the Areopagite, an early Christian convert.

Anonymus, in its Latin spelling, generally with a specific city designation, is traditionally used by scholars in the humanities to refer to an ancient writer whose name is not known, or to a manuscript of their work. Very many such writers have left valuable historical or literary records: an incomplete list of such Anonymi is at Anonymus.

In the history of art, many painting workshops can be identified by their characteristic style and discussed and the workshop's output set in chronological order. Sometimes archival research later identifies the name, as when the "Master of Flémalle"—defined by three paintings in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt— was identified as Robert Campin. The 20th-century art historian Bernard Berenson methodically identified numerous early Renaissance Florentine and Sienese workshops under such sobriquets as "Amico di Sandro" for an anonymous painter in the immediate circle of Sandro Botticelli.

In legal cases, a popularly accepted name to use when it is determined that an individual needs to maintain anonymity is "John Doe." This name is often modified to "Jane Doe" when the anonymity-seeker is female.

The military often feels a need to honor the remains of soldiers for whom identification is impossible. In many countries, such a memorial is named the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

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Anonymity and the Internet

When communicating with others over the Internet, it is frequently preferred to not use any sort of identifiable handle (such as a "user name" or other arbitrary way of identifying who is speaking). The most popular worldwide example of this is within the Japanese forum 2channel. The forum prides itself on the total anonymity of those who post to the channel. The administrators of 2channel see the anonymous posting as a real benefit to those who post to the forum, because it is the argument, not the credibility of the author, that is being debated. This is in stark contrast to other Internet forums, such as Slashdot. In Slashdot-style forums, the ability to post anonymously is available, but other users of the forum tend to hold the content of the post in a lower regard than they would if the same post was sent by a user with a registered username. The Slashdot forum encourages this tendency by attributing posts like this to "Anonymous Coward," implying that the poster lacks the courage to stand by his or her statement.

When sending messages over the Internet, many people enjoy a sense of anonymity (or at least pseudonymity). Many popular systems, such as Usenet, e-mail, instant messaging, and web forums, and P2P systems, foster this perception because there is often no obvious way for a casual user to connect other users with a "real world" identity.

On a technical level, all computers on the Internet use the Internet Protocol to speak to each other. Two-way communication at the protocol level requires that both parties know the IP address of the other. If communications are logged (for example, by the owner of a web-based bulletin board) or intercepted, the IP address of otherwise anonymous recipients may be discovered. Sometimes IP addresses are exposed directly as a feature of the communication system (often the case on Internet Relay Chat networks; also true for "anonymous" Wikipedia editors). Casual users often do not feel that knowledge of their IP address is enough for other participants to connect their online activities to their "real world" identities. Depending on their technical, physical, and legal access, a determined party (such a government prosecutor, or plaintiff in a lawsuit, or a determined stalker) may be able to do so, especially if they are assisted by the records of the Internet Service Provider which has assigned the IP address. Some IP addresses represent a specific computer. Others, due to proxies and Network Address Translation may represent any number of computers or users. It is usually easy to identify which ISP assigned the address, and this may reveal some identifying information about a person, such as geographic location or with the use of geo software the affiliation with a certain organization.

To achieve strong anonymity, intermediate services may be employed to thwart attempts at identification, even by governments. These attempt to use cryptography, passage through multiple legal jurisdictions, and various methods to thwart traffic analysis to achieve this. Examples include anonymous remailers, Anonymous P2P systems, and services of the Anonymizer company, among others.

This has been countered with advances in text analysis, in which the identity of a writer is determined by comparing the writing style of a piece to styles of pieces in which the author is known.

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Controversy

Opponents of online anonymity (e.g., of anonymous remailers or anonymous P2P) suggest that anonymity enables or encourages illegal or dangerous activity (eg, terrorism, drug trafficking, sexual approaches towards minors, and so on). The inference intended by such claims is that, without anonymity, these things would not occur, or would be less likely to do so, and so we would all be safer. This is typically countered by pointing out that prior to the practical availability of this kind of anonymity, all of these things occurred anyway. Actual evidence of a causal or even facilitating connection is limited, and often disputed. There have been several prominent attempts to claim they have, in the press and otherwise; few have included credible evidence, and some have cited mere allegations as 'evidence'.

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Anonymity and politics

The history of anonymous expression in political dissent is long and both honourable, as in the Letters of Junius or Voltaire's Candide, or scurrilous as in pasquinades. In the tradition of anonymous British political criticism, the Federalist Papers were anonymously authored. Without the public discourse on the controversial contents of the U.S. Constitution, ratification would likely have taken much longer as individuals worked through the issues. The Declaration of Independence, however, was not anonymous. If it had been unsigned, it might well have been less effective. In The Infrastructure of Democracy, John Perry Barlow, Joichi Ito, and other US bloggers express a very strong support for anonymous editing as one of the basic requirements of open politics as conducted on the Internet.

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See also

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External links

de:Anonymität es:Anonimato fr:Anonymat it:Anonimo nl:Anonimiteit pt:Anonimato ja:匿名 zh:匿名

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