Anonymous Blogs are often Not!
Late last night while drinking and surfing -- errr, doing Internet research for my book, I came across a very interesting "anonymous" blog. It was anonymous in that there was little indication of who the author was other than a pseudonym: no indication of location, age, sex, etc. It was a very new blog and didn't even contain a single post yet.
It was interesting as I knew immediately whose blog it was - my teenage niece's. There wasn't any one thing that gave it away, but I just knew. It was obvious to me.
Anonymous bloggers have had their identities discovered by spouses, bosses, boy/girlfriends, and others - often with disastrous results. More than one anonymous blogger has been fired when it was obvious who was speaking ill of their boss or company. Anonymous blogs that weren't have signaled the end of relationships and marriages.
It's hard to be anonymous when the whole world is watching - someone will figure it out.
It was interesting as I knew immediately whose blog it was - my teenage niece's. There wasn't any one thing that gave it away, but I just knew. It was obvious to me.
Anonymous bloggers have had their identities discovered by spouses, bosses, boy/girlfriends, and others - often with disastrous results. More than one anonymous blogger has been fired when it was obvious who was speaking ill of their boss or company. Anonymous blogs that weren't have signaled the end of relationships and marriages.
It's hard to be anonymous when the whole world is watching - someone will figure it out.
posted by Ted Demopoulos at 7:13 AM
Comments on "Anonymous Blogs are often Not!"
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Robert Porter said ... (Thursday, December 15, 2005 12:33:00 PM) :
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Ted Demopoulos said ... (Thursday, December 15, 2005 12:56:00 PM) :
post a commentI too am a privacy nut, we have collectivly given up more of our privacy than most realize. And a lot of that loss stems from the ubiquitous (sp) nature of technology.
There are ways to be truly anonymous on the Net, if you take a great deal of care and really understand what you are doing. But while I would defend privacy, I am leary of anonymity in some applications.
People that can hide their identity often do and say things they never would otherwise. Some might argue that this is liberating and a good thing.
I am reminded of an episode where I once worked. Employees were provided with an anonymous ID to use to post to an internal message board. The thought was that this would allow people to express opinions without fear of repricussion.
At first it appeared to be working... But it rapidly degenerated into a name calling flame war as opposed to a forum for real discussion.
And as your article points out, it was often easy to identify the actual author just by the way they said or spelled things etc.
Wasn't the UniBomber caught because of uncommon misspellings and mangled expressions that were recognized by his brother?
In this case, loss of Anonymity=Jail!