Are anon posts actually anonymous? \ stacker news ~meta

307 sats \ 11 comments \ @nullama 13 Aug 2023 meta

There might be a false sense of privacy because even though you can post without being logged into your account, your IP is still visible to SN, so in theory SN could do a simple match between IPs and see that there are other posts with a logged in account with the same IP as an anon post.

Of course you could get a different IP to post anon, but there are other things that can be looked at that can establish a trend in the long term.

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111 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 13 Aug 2023

VPN + TOR

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ryu 15 Aug 2023

People need to stop recommending this combo, holy shit.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 13 Aug 2023

It is misleading I agree. We're using it colloquially which is probably not appropriate for this crowd.

We are planning on renaming/theming the feature, so perhaps that will reduce the illusion of absolute privacy.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @JesseJames 13 Aug 2023

There is no such thing as anon truly, you always leave digital breadcrumbs and those who are determined will find out who and where, time and money is the only limitation to that. That's the nature of the beast. The only true way to be anon is to get off the grid. Cash ops, carburetor car and travel lightly... and have fun, just don't look back... :-)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullama OP 13 Aug 2023

Satoshi Nakamoto is a true anon up to this day, and there's a lot of people with a lot of resources trying to figure out that one.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @sahil 13 Aug 2023

Let say if you have masked your IP and browser fingerprint.

You can still be matched with a corresponding usernames based on your writing style.

Here is an experiment conducted by a hn user on hn data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016

This site lets you put in a username and get the users with the most similar writing style to that user. It confirmed several users who I suspected were alts and after informally asking around has identified abandoned accounts of people I know from many years ago. I made this site mostly to show how easy this is and how it can erode online privacy. If some guy with a little bit of Python, and $8 to rent a decent dedicated server for a day can make this, imagine what a company with millions of dollars and a couple dozen PhD linguists could do

On the same day, he closed the site due to privacy concerns (Because it was working too well)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullama OP 13 Aug 2023

Interesting, I knew there was something like that, but wasn't aware that it was that good at identifying posts.

I guess it makes sense, specially if there are many posts.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 13 Aug 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 13 Aug 2023

I think the intent is to be anonymous to other users. SN is a centralized social app, so if privacy is your primary concern, you probably aren’t here anyway

61 sats \ 1 reply \ @nemo 13 Aug 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bear 13 Aug 2023

wow didn't know there's a link to that now I'm surprised 8.3k yearly visitors use Microsoft edge.