Online anonymity disappearing

[qubit]

Yes, it looks like the days of posting anonymously, or psuedononymously on a forum, as we do on TPU are numbered, if this article on New Scientist and the posting example set by www.techcrunch.com is anything to go by - go on, click on a story and try to post anonymously...

Illegal and just plain bad behaviour online has sparked discussions of new laws to combat cyberbullying and secure the internet from criminal activity. Such legislation may soon be irrelevant. Several companies are building tools that can identify internet users with unprecedented precision. Proponents claims the new tools will lead to a safer and less hostile internet. If the internet is to keep developing, they say, perhaps we can no longer afford to live in an anonymous environment where no one need ever be held accountable for their actions. Are we ready to abandon the option of shielding our online identity?

"The internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer," Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, told an audience in the UK at the Edinburgh Television Festival in August.

Now, the following is just f* scary.

There too, however, identity technologies are waiting to catalogue their misdeeds. Whether or not you share your identity with the websites you visit is no longer entirely within your control.
Indelible ID

One of the most powerful identity tracking systems now available is offered by BlueCava, a company based in Irvine, California, that helps websites monitor fraud, among other things. BlueCava's software "fingerprints" any device that someone uses to visit a website, be it a desktop or laptop computer or a mobile device like a smartphone. That fingerprint is made possible by the hundreds of types of data that browsers send when connecting to a website, from the machine's operating system to the time zone in which the device is set to operate (see diagram).

You might be surprised at just how mundane these details can be. Consider one of the data types passed from browser to website: the fonts installed on your machine. They will include not just the fonts that it came with, but also fonts that may have been included with software you installed, making the complete list distinctive. "A typical machine has 4000 to 20,000 fonts," says BlueCava chief executive David Norris. Fall outside this average and your machine is distinctive. "If you have 1926 that's a lot of uniqueness," Norris says.

See more: view the data your browser is passing to websites using an online test from privacy.net.

BlueCava combines these bits of information to create a unique ID number for every device that accesses a website running the company's software. The firm has assembled a dossier on 1 billion devices, and Norris estimates that the number will double in the coming year. At this rate, it won't be long, he says, before all 10 billion internet-enabled computers in the world have a place in BlueCava's repository. Norris claims that when presented with a query from a machine already in the database, the software can recognise its source 99.5 per cent of the time.

Best to be as Mr Average as possible, then...


And this is a really important point, one which people are so used to doing, they don't even think about it:

What's more, online social networks collapse our social lives to a single space, completely unlike normal life where we generally interact with different groups at different times and in different ways. A person might share a radical political view with a friend but shy away from expressing the same opinion at work, for example. It is normal for us to take on what sociologists call different "social roles", yet this behaviour is inhibited by the openness of Facebook, and less directly by the less transparent technologies that bind our online activities into a single identity.

Oddly, nowhere in this article does it discuss the likelyhood that identity theft will become rampant. Tinfoil hats go on

New Scientist


So, should TPU adopt Big Brother-style user identifying software like this? Vote in the poll - yes, it's a public poll, we want to know who you are.

And my vote? A big, fat, NO.

 

[Darkleoco]

Troubling very troubling, seems like privacy and rights are becoming a thing of the past now doesn't it?

 

[entropy13]

I voted "no" because there were a lot of words added after it, but not too much that my brain won't be able to comprehend it anymore. That's why I didn't vote "My brain is too small to comprehend such deep questions" because my brain is too small to comprehend too many words typed in one option. But I just typed too many words in one statement just now, so even I don't really comprehend why I can't comprehend too many words but still type too many words in a single statement.

 

[Fourstaff]

Keep It Simple, Stupid. If we don't like a particular member of TPU due to bullying flaming etc, banhammer will strike from the sky. No need for such tactics which will cause people to leave.

 

[Jack Doph]

Until personally identifiable information is collected, there's nothing sinister.
If such a thing were to occur, then at least under Australian law, the offending party would be liable for prosecution (explicit permission *must* be given prior to any such information gathering).

Also, privacy.net is far from a great place to see info in great detail - in keeping with the above example it gets my State wrong and is unable to locate *any* fonts.

That said, I voted no, obviously

 

[_JP_]

This just looks like another way to shove advertisements into our faces, to me.

This:

Several companies are building tools that can identify internet users with unprecedented precision.

& this:

Proponents claims the new tools will lead to a safer and less hostile internet.

Don't go together.
Simply because these tools always manage to be used for all the wrong reasons, once they get to the wrong hands.

If the internet is to keep developing, they say, perhaps we can no longer afford to live in an anonymous environment where no one need ever be held accountable for their actions.

Ah, but people are already accountable for what they do on the internet if it is serious enough, so this an invalid argument.

Are we ready to abandon the option of shielding our online identity?

Those that already have facebook, yes. The rest? Nope.avi

Also, don't forget Skynet.


*Puts on til-foil hat and starts changing MAC addresses*


EDIT (forgot about the poll and the thread's original title): No. I like my identity here as it is and my real one is not factor. I will identify myself if needed, but until then, I want to keep being known as _JP_.

 

[twilyth]

Yawn.

Here's what it got from my browser

Connection: keep-alive
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Cookie: bhCookieSaveSess=1; bhCookieSess=1
Host: analyze.privacy.net
Referer: http://analyze.privacy.net/
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1
DNT: 1

And because I use a VPN, the ip address comes back to a location in Texas. I'm not in Texas.

 

[AlienIsGOD]

To be honest i could really care less, alot of sites have FB connect so im showing my real name to any of those sites. I personally have nothing to hide and would use my real name if required.

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

Most of the guys who were on TS know, that we generally know everyone's names already.

 

[EarthDog]

Not that I have anything to hide... but still F no. Moderators/member need to do their jobs is all...and here, they generally do a fine job...especially considering all the members that report posts.

Most of the guys who were on TS know, that we generally know everyone's names already.

And how many people come on TS vs the active member base?

 

[DOM]

I use the first 3 letters of my name lol

 

[Kreij]

I voted yes because it would make it a lot easier to find you doofuses and beat the snot out of you if you trash me here at TPU.

 

[MilkyWay]

No, it should remain a personal choice. People who break the rules will be banned.

I dont see the point as people can forge a name or lie about their location.

 

[Kreij]

Actually, I don't care if you guys know who I am or where I live.
I would be thrilled to have you stop by, talk tech and drink beer until we fall over.

 

[sliderider]

Actually, I don't care if you guys know who I am or where I live.
I would be thrilled to have you stop by, talk tech and drink beer until we fall over.

Until someone you pissed off shows up at your front door with a gun.

 

[Kreij]

Until someone you pissed off shows up at your front door with a gun.

LOL, just one?
Notice to anyone coming over : Bring guns. We can cut down trees with large bore weapons (like we did last weekend when we had the monthly Jeep club meeting here), and bring a change of clothes, the ATV trails are a bit muddy.

 

[twilyth]

LOL, just one?
Notice to anyone coming over : Bring guns. We can cut down trees with large bore weapons (like we did last weekend when we had the monthly Jeep club meeting here), and bring a change of clothes, the ATV trails are a bit muddy.

What. No autonomous portal guns? I'm guessing that's in the budget for next year though.

 

[_JP_]

I voted yes because it would make it a lot easier to find you doofuses and beat the snot out of you if you trash me here at TPU.

Feel free to come anytime, I'll prepare something for lunch.

Actually, I don't care if you guys know who I am or where I live.
I would be thrilled to have you stop by, talk tech and drink beer until we fall over.

Hold the drinking, add shooting something.

 

[btarunr]

You expect a fair poll on such an issue, and yet don't make it a truly anonymous one?

The irony.

 

[Kreij]

LOL ... nice catch Bta.

 

[cheesy999]

"A typical machine has 4000 to 20,000 fonts," says BlueCava chief executive David Norris. Fall outside this average and your machine is distinctive. "If you have 1926 that's a lot of uniqueness," Norris says.

these font things don't seem to work as well as they should

If i run that pivacy.net site on google chrome i get a grand total of 0 fonts recognised, this goes up to around 100 in internet explorer though

does this make me unique?

 

[Inceptor]

I voted 'No' because this site is not immune from the small minority of immature and/or disturbed users who would act in various malicious ways against you, for no tangible reason. That is, the ones that DON'T know who you are already.

For me personally, there would be some people, who, if they came to this forum and read my posts, saw my avatar picture, and location description, might recognize me, but I don't particularly care about them recognizing me. They're the 'known unknowns', it's the 'unknown unknowns' that are the problem. Heh.

 

[Kreij]

There are people who behave poorly because of the anonimity that the internet allows.
They would NEVER act that way if they were face-to-face with someone and might have to own up to their actions.
I am WYSIWYG in both real life and online, for better or worse, but to hide behind the anonimity of the 'net and cause misery is being an epic coward in my book.

As always, just my 2 cents.

 

[entropy13]

Yawn.

Here's what it got from my browser



And because I use a VPN, the ip address comes back to a location in Texas. I'm not in Texas.

Although they did get my country right when I checked privacy.net, it's not necessarily solely my IP address.

I still remember getting banned in a local server for Diablo II years ago for violations my IP address made, during a time period that I wasn't playing. LOL So the person that should have been banned would have been able to play then since that meant the ISP "rotated" the IP addresses around already.

 

[qubit]

You expect a fair poll on such an issue, and yet don't make it a truly anonymous one?

http://img.techpowerup.org/111120/bta9073.jpg

The irony.

Yes, it was intended to be ironic. I was originally going to do it anonymously, but then reckoned that the ironic humour was worth going for.

Making people really give out their real identity online is a terrible idea on so many levels and that's what my post is about. As expected and hoped for, the No vote is winning by a country mile. In hindsight, I think I should have voted the my brain is too small option, to make things even funnier, while clarifying my real position as a No vote.

btw, I like the chocolate pieces avatar.