Anonymity – Good or Bad??
This document is composed of selected sections from a Anonymity on the Internet, written by Jacob Palme and Mikael Berglund. The complete paper can be viewed at http://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html (in web form) or https://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.pdf (in PDF form).
How is anonymity used on the Internet? How anonymous is an Internet user, and how can an Internet user achieve anonymity? What are the pros and cons of anonymity on the Internet? Is anonymity controlled by laws specially directed at regulating anonymity? How should laws on anonymity in the Internet be constructed? Should the EU establish a common directive on how anonymity is to be handled in the member states?
Types of Anonymity
In this paper, the word “message” is used to designate any communication unit (e-mail, newsgroup article, web page, pamphlet, book, rumour, etc.)
Anonymity means that the real author of a message is not shown. Anonymity can be implemented to make it impossible or very difficult to find out the real author of a message.
A common variant of anonymity is pseudonymity, where another name than the real author is shown. The pseudonym is sometimes kept very secret, sometimes the real name behind a pseudonym is openly known, such as Marc Twain as a pseudonym for Samuel Clemens or Ed McBain as a pseudonym for Evan Hunter , whose original name was Salvatore A. Lombino . A person can even use multiple different pseudonyms for different kinds of communication.
An advantage with a pseudonym, compared with complete anonymity, is that it is possible to recognize that different messages are written by the same author. Sometimes, it is also possible to write a letter to a pseudonym (without knowing the real person behind it) and get replies back. It is even possible to have long discourses between two pseudonyms, none of them knowing the real name behind the other’s pseudonym. A disadvantage, for a person who wants to be anonymous, is that combining information in many messages from the same person may make it easier to find out who the real person is behind the pseudonym.
A variant of pseudonymity is deception [Donath 1996], where a person intentionally tries to give the impression of being someone else, or of having different authority or expertise.
Anonymity before the Internet
Anonymity is not something which was invented with the Internet. Anonymity and pseudonymity has occurred throughout history. For example, William Shakespeare is probably a pseudonym, and the real name of this famous author is not known and will probably never be known.
Anonymity has been used for many purposes.
A well-known person may use a pseudonym to write messages, where the person does not want people’s preconception of the real author color their perception of the message.
Also other people may want to hide certain information about themselves in order to achieve a more unbiased evaluation of their messages. For example, in history it has been common that women used male pseudonyms, and for Jews to use pseudonyms in societies where their religion was persecuted.
Anonymity is often used to protect the privacy of people, for example when reporting results of a scientific study, when describing individual cases.
Many countries even have laws which protect anonymity in certain circumstances. Examples:
A person may, in many countries, consult a priest, doctor or lawyer and reveal personal information which is protected. In some cases, for example confession in catholic churches, the confession booth is specially designed to allow people to consult a priest, without seeing him face to face.
The anonymity in confessional situations is however not always 100 %. If a person tells a lawyer that he plans a serious crime, some countries allow or even require that the lawyer tell the police. The decision to do so is not easy, since people who tell a priest or a psychologist that they plan a serious crime, may often do this to express their feeling more than their real intention.
Many countries have laws protecting the anonymity of tip-offs to newspapers. It is regarded as important that people can give tips to newspapers about abuse, even though they are dependent on the organization they are criticizing and do not dare reveal their real name.
Advertisement in personal sections in newspapers are almost always signed by a pseudonym for obvious reasons.
Is Anonymity Good or Bad?
In summary, anonymity and pseudonymity can be used for good and bad purposes. And anonymity can in may cases be desirable for one person and not desirable for another person. A company may, for example, not like an employee to divulge information about improper practices within the company, but society as a whole may find it important that such improper practices are publicly exposed.
Good purposes of anonymity and pseudonymity:
People dependent on an organization, or afraid of revenge, may divulge serious misuse, which should be revealed. Anonymous tips can be used as an information source by newspapers, as well as by police departments, soliciting tips aimed at catching criminals. Everyone will not regard such anonymous communication as good. For example, message boards established outside companies, but for employees of such companies to vent their opinions on their employer, have sometimes been used in ways that at least the companies themselves were not happy about [Abelson 2001]. Police use of anonymity is a complex issue, since the police often will want to know the identity of the tipper in order to get more information, evaluate the reliability or get the tipper as a witness. Is it ethical for police to identify the tipper if it has opened up an anonymous tipping hotline?
People in a country with a repressive political regime may use anonymity (for example Internet-based anonymity servers in other countries) to avoid persecution for their political opinions. Note that even in democratic countries, some people claim, rightly or wrongly, that certain political opinions are persecuted. [Wallace 1999] gives an overview of uses of anonymity to protect political speech. Every country has a limit on which political opinions are allowed, and there are always people who want to express forbidden opinions, like racial agitation in most democratic countries.
People may openly discuss personal stuff which would be embarrassing to tell many people about, such as sexual problems. Research shows that anonymous participants disclose significantly more information about themselves [Joinson 2001].
People may get more objective evaluation of their messages, by not showing their real name.
People are more equal in anonymous discussions, factors like status, gender, etc., will not influence the evaluation of what they say.
Pseudonymity can be used to experiment with role playing, for example a man posing as a woman in order to understand the feelings of people of different gender.
Pseudonymity can be a tool for timid people to dare establish contacts which can be of value for them and others, e.g. through contact advertisements.
There has always, however, also been a dark side of anonymity:
Anonymity can be used to protect a criminal performing many different crimes, for example slander, distribution of child pornography, illegal threats, racial agitation, fraud, intentional damage such as distribution of computer viruses, etc. The exact set of illegal acts varies from country to country, but most countries have many laws forbidding certain “informational” acts, everything from high treason to instigation of rebellion, etc., to swindling.
Anonymity can be used to seek contacts for performing illegal acts, like a pedophile searching for children to abuse or a swindler searching for people to rip off.
Even when the act is not illegal, anonymity can be used for offensive or disruptive communication. For example, some people use anonymity in order to say nasty things about other people.
The border between illegal and legal but offensive use is not very sharp, and varies depending on the law in each country.