How Anonymous Is Anonymous?

In recent years there has been a rise in awareness of the issue of online anonymity, but what does it mean and is it realistic?

In broad terms anonymity can be taken to mean the ability to have your individual identity protected.

Most tools and sites take the approach of making you look as similar in appearance to other users, hiding your personal identity behind a shared identity.  This is similar to dressing up in a chicken suit when taking part in a marathon.  If you can persuade other competitors to also dress up in chicken suits, you all appear the same and so your personal identity is concealed.  The most common way a website can detect your identity is via your web browser, as this is the means by which you interact.  Sites like Panopticlick attempt to illustrate how similar or different your settings are to other users to determine how anonymous your connection is.

There is another way of assessing anonymity and this is behavioural anonymity – do you behave like other users?  Taking the previous analogy of the chicken suit runners, you may look like the other chickens, but taken as a whole, most runners wear typical running outfits and the chickens stand out from the rest.  Sites like whoer look at the issue of anonymity from this perspective, and assess how similar you are to other internet users behaviour, hiding in plain sight in effect.

There is a debate about which method is better, supporters of the first method argue that behavioural anonymity discourages people from protecting their identity.  Supporters of the second method argue that if you make yourself identifiable by attempting to avoid detection you defeat the first objective of anonymity of being unidentifiable, and so attract more attention.

The rise of sites using detection analytics to prevent ‘anonymous’ users from using them is testimony to the fact that the battle is being fought on several fronts.

Whilst it is not impossible, the two methods are very different in their approach and so generate difficulties in reconciling them – the more you tend towards one method, the more you tend away from the other.  The reality is probably that you will never achieve perfect anonymity, so the question is
“what degree of anonymity is acceptable?” 

Every one will have a different, and personal answer to that question.