Why do people seek anonymity on the Internet? Informing policy and design

Abstract

In this research we set out to discover why and how people seek anonymity in their online interactions. Our goal is to inform policy and the design of future Internet architecture and applications. We interviewed 44 people from America, Asia, Europe, and Africa who had sought anonymity and asked them about their experiences. A key finding of our research is the very large variation in interviewees' past experiences and life situations leading them to seek anonymity, and how they tried to achieve it. Our results suggest implications for the design of online communities, challenges for policy, and ways to improve anonymity tools and educate users about the different routes and threats to anonymity on the Internet.

Full text

Why Do People Seek Anonymity on the Internet?
Informing Policy and Design
Ruogu Kang1, Stephanie Brown2, Sara Kiesler1
Human Computer Interaction Institute1
Department of Psychology2
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
ruoguk@cs.cmu.edu, smb1@andrew.cmu.edu, kiesler@cs.cmu.edu
ABSTRACT
In this research we set out to discover why and how people
seek anonymity in their online interactions. Our goal is to
inform policy and the design of future Internet architecture
and applications. We interviewed 44 people from America,
Asia, Europe, and Africa who had sought anonymity and
asked them about their experiences. A key finding of our
research is the very large variation in interviewees’ past
experiences and life situations leading them to seek
anonymity, and how they tried to achieve it. Our results
suggest implications for the design of online communities,
challenges for policy, and ways to improve anonymity tools
and educate users about the different routes and threats to
anonymity on the Internet.
Author Keywords
Anonymity; online community; information disclosure;
privacy.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.4.3. Information systems applications: Communications
Applications, K.4.2. Computers and Society: Social Issues.
General Terms
Human Factors; Security.
INTRODUCTION
Should people have the right to anonymity on the Internet?
Should CHI researchers join with others to make anonymity
online easier to achieve? Or should online anonymity be
banned? These questions are matters of debate among
security researchers [e.g., 9], politicians and policy analysts
[e.g., 31], community designers [e.g., 16], architects of the
new Internet (e.g., www.cs.cmu.edu/~xia/) and the public.
Although hundreds of laboratory and field studies describe
positive and negative social effects of anonymous
communication [e.g., 7, 30], there is a dearth of research on
Internet users’ own perspectives on anonymity, and the
literature that exists mainly derives from studies of one or a
few online communities or activities (e.g., the study of
4chan in [5]). We lack a full understanding of the real life
circumstances surrounding people’s experiences of seeking
anonymity and their feelings about the tradeoffs between
anonymity and identifiability. A main purpose of the
research reported here was to learn more about how people
think about online anonymity and why they seek it. More
specifically, we wanted to capture a broad slice of user
activities and experiences from people who have actually
sought anonymity, to investigate their experiences, and to
understand their attitudes about anonymous and identified
communication.
Another purpose of this research was to understand the
strategies people use in trying to achieve anonymity online.
Most tools available to achieve online anonymity are poorly
understood. More than 85% of the interviewees in one
study said that they did not know how to surf the Web
anonymously [9]; most people do not know who has access
to information about them or how they get this information
[17]. Indeed, the average person has only a vague notion of
how the Internet works [23,25] and the potential threats for
users [15]. This knowledge may be important because
anonymity is no longer assured just by using pseudonyms
or relying on the obscurity of large numbers. People shop
online using credit card information often revealed to third
parties. They search and browse, and their clicks are
recorded. A user’s comments in a blog post may be
searched and connected to his professional website. Even
personal health records, despite attempts to keeping them
confidential, are not necessarily safe [27]. How well do
people understand this context of increasing social
transparency and third party use of their information? We
wanted to discover how users try to achieve anonymity, and
whether they are confident that they have achieved it.
The intended contribution of this research is to provide a
richer understanding of the different situations in which
people try to avoid being identified online, to inform
debates about anonymity on the Internet, and to suggest
improvements for the wellbeing and privacy of users.
What We Know So Far
Security researchers define anonymity as unidentifiability
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“within a set of subjects” [24, p. 2]. The definition we use
in this paper is based on Gary Marx’s analysis [18]: being
anonymous means a person cannot be identified according
to any of seven dimensions of identity knowledge, that is,
the person’s legal name, location, pseudonyms that can be
linked to the person’s legal name or location, pseudonyms
that cannot be linked to specific identity information but
that provide other clues to identity, revealing patterns of
behavior, membership in a social group, or information,
items, or skills that indicate personal characteristics.
Internet users care a lot about their privacy, and surveys
suggest they may have reasons to seek privacy by hiding
their identity [1]. What we know about these reasons is
derived mainly from studies of particular activities or
groups who intentionally seek anonymity, including whistle
blowers [12], members of stigmatized groups [20], people
conducting sensitive searches [9], hackers [8], and lurkers
[26].
Anonymity lifts inhibitions and can lead to unusual acts of
kindness or generosity, or it can lead to misbehavior, such
as harsh or rude language and acts that are illegal or
harmful. [30]. People use the protection of anonymity to
reduce the social risks of discussing unpopular opinions and
taboo topics, and to create different personas online than
they exhibit offline [3, 37].
We also can draw on the literature about the different ways
people anonymize their Internet activities, including the use
of proxy servers, Secure Sockets Layer technology,
anonymous emailers, and cookie managers [33]. These
options are used by comparatively few Internet users,
despite their concerns about privacy and security [2,4,38].
People more often modify their own behavior to manage
their identity presentations to other users, for instance, by
falsifying their personal information or using multiple email
accounts [6], or adjusting their profiles on social networks
sites [32].
These studies suggest that attitudes about particular online
communities or sites, technical barriers, and personal
privacy preferences can help explain people’s motivations
to seek anonymity. However, to inform policy and design,
we need a better understanding of the real life contexts that
lead people to seek anonymity across different Internet
activities, and their effectiveness in doing so. We therefore
conducted interviews with people who had sought
anonymity online to learn about their activities, their
experiences, their knowledge, and their opinions of being
anonymous online.
METHOD
We recruited Internet users who said they had done
something anonymously online in the past, and who
volunteered for a confidential interview study. We
conducted one-hour semi-structured remote interviews with
them from October 2011 to March 2012 via cell phone,
Skype or IM chat from an anonymous client. All chat logs
and audio recordings were coded anonymously.
Because we did not have prior theory or hypotheses to test,
we used a qualitative interview approach (see, for example,
[11]). The interviews used a protocol with follow-up
questions to explore answers in further detail [22]. The
interviewer asked interviewees what activities they had
done online anonymously, telling them that “anonymous”
meant having no connection with personal information such
as their legal name or persistent email address. For each
activity, the interviewer asked interviewees why they
wanted to be anonymous. Interviewees were prompted to
give concrete examples of anonymous activities and the
history of those activities. The interviewer asked them to
describe the methods they used to achieve anonymity and to
evaluate their level of anonymity when taking those actions
(i.e., unidentifiable to the rest of the world, to some users
on the site, to some of their friends, to website moderators,
or to anyone outside the community).
In the second part of the interview, the interviewer asked
interviewees about the activities they did using their real
names or other personal information that identified them.
They were asked why they used their real names for those
activities. The interview ended by asking interviewees to
evaluate the pros and cons of anonymous and identified
communication online.
Participants
We interviewed 44 participants, 23 women and 21 men.
They were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk,
Craigslist, and university forums. We told recruits that we
were interested in online anonymity and asked them to
participate if they had ever used the Internet anonymously.
All of our interviewees said they used the Internet
frequently, and had at least one prior experience with
anonymous browsing or another type of anonymous online
activity. Interviewees were from the United States (15),
mainland China (14), Taiwan (9), Hong Kong (1), the
Philippines (1), the United Kingdom (1), Romania (1),
Greece (1), and Ethiopia (1). Their ages and occupations
varied widely; there were students, employees, and retirees.
Interviewees reported a range of technical computing skills
from practically none to advanced; one interviewee was an
IT manager and another had a university degree in network
security.
Data Analysis
All interviews were recorded, transcribed and translated
into English. For interviews conducted in Mandarin
Chinese, the original transcripts and the translated versions
were coded separately and back translated. Discrepancies
were resolved in discussion.
We performed qualitative data analysis using a grounded
theory approach [10]. The data were coded in NVivo
software. In the first stage of analysis, we performed open
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coding, identifying anonymous activities, behaviors, and
attitudes in the interview transcripts. Two coders
independently coded the same subset of the interviews,
discussed and resolved differences, and clarified code
definitions. We then performed axial coding. We discussed
the body of coded transcripts, and performed affinity
diagramming to group similar concepts and generate
connections. These were clustered into themes. We returned
to the interviews to clarify ambiguous codes and to divide
themes that were too broad into separate parts. We then
examined the relationships between these thematic
categories, looking for patterns in reported behaviors and
motivations. We refined themes during the writing process.
RESULTS
The interviewees described a myriad of unique anonymous
activities on the Internet. A retired teacher created an
anonymous online community for English learners to
practice their language skills with each other. A Chinese
student used anonymous social networking profiles to play
good-natured tricks on his friends. Some interviewees used
anonymity as a general online practice, but most used it
judiciously, for particular kinds of online interactions.
About half of the interviewees (53%) used anonymity for
illegal or malicious activities such as attacking or hacking
others, or they engaged in socially undesirable activities
like browsing sites depicting violence or pornography.
Other socially undesirable activities included downloading
files illegally, flaming others, ‘peeping’ others, or searching
for others’ personal information online. The line between
illegality and undesirability was sometimes fuzzy, and
many whose behavior was acceptable in some situations,
for example, within a discussion forum, were fearful it
would be unacceptable in others, for example, at work. It
was also impossible to cleanly separate “bad guys” from
“good guys” in our data because many of those who
reported antisocial behaviors (e.g., behaviors that are
unfriendly, antagonistic, or detrimental to social order) also
reported prosocial behaviors (e.g., behaviors that are
altruistic, or intended to help others).
Instrumental and Social Anonymity
Table 1 summarizes the various online activities that
interviewees did anonymously. Sixty-one percent of the
interviewees mentioned instrumental activities they did
anonymously, including browsing websites and
downloading files. Many search engines provide
personalized search results and recommendations, but some
interviewees browsed anonymously to avoid tailored results
and access a wider range of information or to avoid
personalized advertising. Some interviewees browsed
anonymously because they felt that registering or logging in
was unnecessary and only benefited a company.
Anonymous social activities
Ninety-three percent of the interviewees reported
anonymous social interactions online. Some anonymous
social activities were idiosyncratic, seemingly done for fun
or amusement. An interviewee in mainland China created a
fictitious profile on a social networking site to play a trick
on a friend.
I created a profile similar to my friend’s profile on
Renren.com. Then I added all the contacts from his
‘friends’ list, and posted some funny updates daily …
since he was on good terms with me, I liked to play tricks
on him. He did that to me too. (#30)
Many anonymous social activities, however, were
associated with groups. Anonymity can make it difficult for
people to establish trust or get credit for one’s contributions
in groups, and may hinder online community building [16].
Our interviewees generally agreed that these were benefits
of identifiability. Nonetheless, more than half of our
interviewees were anonymously involved in various online
interest groups, mostly hobby groups on topics such as
fiction, music, pets, games, technology, and sports. One
popular reason for anonymity was that the norm of those
groups was to be anonymous. In a few cases, the group had
an implicit or explicit membership standard that encouraged
anonymity in those who did not conform. For instance,
interviewee #27 joined a Japanese video sharing
Type of anonymous activity
Number of
interviewees
(N = 44)
Instrumental Anonymous Activities (61% of
interviewees)
Filesharing and downloading
18 (41%)
Browsing and searching for
information
18 (41%)
Social Anonymous Activities (93% of interviewees)
Participating in special interest groups
25 (57%)
Social networking
24 (55%)
Sharing art or work
20 (45%)
Exchanging help and support
16 (36%)
Buying and selling
13 (30%)
Discussing or being involved in
politics
9 (20%)
Reviewing and recommending
4 (9%)
Table 1. Types of anonymous activities!
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community anonymously to hide his American identity,
because the community excluded foreigners.
Although social networking generally requires using one’s
real identity, half of our interviewees reported using
fictitious profiles to go on social networking or dating sites,
or used false personal information when chatting online.
Some interviewees used different social network profiles to
separate the information they shared with different groups
of people. A teacher (#17) was very active in a fandom
group, and often posted fan fiction online. She wanted to
keep in touch with other members of that community, but
she was afraid that she might be criticized if her family or
her boss found out about her writing because it was not
“real” fiction. She therefore maintained two Facebook
accounts, one under her real name for family and co-
workers and one under a fictitious name for fandom friends.
Nearly half of the interviewees reported posting original
artwork, photographs, videos, and writing online to share
with others and receive feedback. We expected
interviewees to attach their real names to original works to
gain status and reputation, but many interviewees chose
instead to sacrifice recognition to avoid links to their offline
life. Interviewee #1 participated in various online music
communities every week. She always posted her songs
anonymously so that no one at work would find them and
judge her by them.
The reason I won't use my real name is to not connect
my real life with the online community… I don’t want my
supervisors and colleagues to know about the other side
of my life, since that may make my image look bad. (#1)
Interviewees who posted original work also sought
anonymity to manage their online interactions. One artist
told us that he built a reputation in online communities by
posting his works under a consistent pseudonym, although
he wasn’t sure that counted as being recognized for his
work. He also explained that he preferred not to log into his
account at all when reviewing other people’s work.
When I post critiques I tend to be rather harsh…. [I’m
afraid of] being targeted by someone who can't take a
critique, so they might decide to try to find my alias on
other art sites, and troll me in return. (#24)
Consistent with McKenna and Bargh [20], some
interviewees sought help in online support groups
anonymously. Some joined online domestic abuse or
parenting support groups. Others went to forums to ask
questions about finances or gaming. In addition, some
interviewees provided support or help to others
anonymously. Interviewees chose to be anonymous to
preserve their public or self-image, or to manage their
online relationships. The same interviewee who liked to
play tricks on his friend told us that he also visited
technology forums and helped people solve technical
issues. He was happy to help, but sought to avoid unwanted
commitments.
Once I helped a guy solve a problem, then he asked my
real identity and kept coming back to me. It was hard to
refuse him since he knew who I was. I don’t like this kind
of thing being turned into an obligation. (#30)
Thirteen interviewees mentioned buying or selling products
or services with other users. Nine lived in Asian countries
where BBS or forums allow people to purchase goods from
other users anonymously. Four interviewees from the West
also bought and sold goods online. Of these four, two
mentioned using fictitious information to buy and sell items
on Craigslist to avoid being identified or tracked down by
online predators. The other two said they typically used
their real information to pay a seller using a credit card, but
sometimes they initially communicated with the seller
under a pseudonym.
Nine interviewees joined political discussions on
anonymous forums to contribute their views and debate
with other users. Some also engaged in anonymous online
voting, made online donations, or participated in social
protests. Interviewees from several different countries
mentioned browsing news sites and political blogs and
forums anonymously to access information from blocked
sites and to protect themselves from social censure or legal
consequences.
Four participants anonymously posted their views about
products and services. They mentioned their concerns about
not knowing who would access their reviews and having
their reviews stored online forever. They sought anonymity
to avoid negative reactions from the subjects of the reviews
or from people with opposing views. One woman explained
that she always signed her postal letters with her real name
because they were addressed to one person or organization,
but that she preferred to write anonymously when online.
I posted a very bad review [of a restaurant]. And I guess
I did that [anonymously]. I live in a small town, so I
certainly didn’t want to put my real name, although I
would have no problem speaking face-to-face with the
restaurant owner … If you speak to somebody face-to-
face, you know who you spoke to. But when it’s online,
you’re really potentially speaking to billions of people,
and the information will last. (#21)
In sum, we identified a variety of instrumental and social
online activities that people did anonymously. Consistent
with prior work, people preferred to be anonymous when
seeking help or doing other activities that might make them
seem socially undesirable or needy, such as when they were
using online dating sites or asking for support in groups, but
we also found that people pursued anonymous activities
when being identified might expose to them to personal
threat.
Personal threat models
When interviewees told us about an activity they did
anonymously online, we asked them their reasons for doing
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so. Many answers reflected a personal “threat model” of
persons or organizations. Frequently, the source of threat
lay outside the particular activity, site, or group in which
the person sought anonymity. Personal threat fell into five
categories: online predators, organizations, known others,
other users on the site or in the community, and unknown
others.
Online predators included criminals, hackers, scammers,
stalkers, and malicious online vendors. Fear of identity theft
and spam was the main concern of those who made online
sales or purchases with credit cards or account information.
Fear of stalking or harassment was a major motivation for
hiding one’s identity when chatting, posting on forums, and
building social networks.
Organizations that posed a threat included government and
business organizations. Government was a threat because it
has the power to identify and punish illegal, subversive, or
undesirable online activity. Interviewees who told us about
illegal downloading or filesharing were concerned with
avoiding exposure and arrest. Companies were a threat
because they could reuse or sell information to marketers
and spammers.
People that the interviewees knew in real life were
sometimes named as a threat, mostly as a precaution but
sometimes because of a past negative experience. Among
those named were specific family members, friends,
employers, teachers, co-workers, supervisors, classmates,
current significant others, and previous romantic partners.
Anonymity was particularly a concern for people who
wished to avoid harassment from estranged or controlling
parents, former friends, or previous romantic partners.
Other users on a site or in the community could also be
considered a threat. For example, a Taiwanese blogger told
us that he used to maintain a blog. When he stopped posting
for a while in order to keep some personal information
private, his friends on the site kept looking for him and
asking about his life. This was a source of stress for him.
Those online friends know what your life looks like, but
then suddenly if you don’t talk with anyone, or just
disappear, then everyone would ask what had happened
to you. This is a huge pressure to me. (#36)
Finally, interviewees also mentioned nonspecific malicious
entities that they felt were lurking online. Thirty-nine
percent of interviewees expressed the attitude that revealing
personal information online is “dangerous” without any
specific threat in mind. A college student who participated
in technology and gaming forums lurked almost all the
time, manually changed his IP sometimes, and used
multiple email accounts, but rarely had any specific threat
to hide from.
If I do something stupid online I want to be prepared...
It's just like when you prepare for a disaster, you don't
know what disaster is going to strike. (#10)
In sum, interviewees’ personal threat models generally
involved protection and privacy from other people and
groups; they were either attacker-centric or relationship-
protective, as compared with the more typical software-
centric model (e.g., STRIDE) used in computer security
analysis (e.g., [13]). Participants sought to protect
themselves from real-world threats such as getting arrested,
physical attacks on themselves or their families, stalking,
harassment, and loss of property or jobs. They also feared
online attacks, including online harassment, trolling, and
flaming. They used anonymity to prevent potential privacy
leaks, expressing concerns that once their information was
online, it would be stored permanently and anyone could
access it. One 4chan user almost always posted
anonymously, because he felt that any information he
shared online would be out of his hands.
To a large degree, you cannot control who views,
accesses, or uses any data you put on the Internet … the
Internet never forgets. (#12)
Other interviewees made similar statements.
The Internet is sticky - pages stay up, info stays up, etc.
(#16)
I have no clue where [personal information] goes or how
people could access it. (#25)
Motivations other than threat
The literature in social psychology and online communities
has described motivations for anonymity that are less about
threat per se than about the emotional effects of anonymity
and ways that anonymity can help people manage their
social relationships online [20]. In accord with this
literature, a few of our interviewees said that using a
pseudonym or fictional identity made them feel “cool” or
“sophisticated.” Some mentioned feeling more relaxed
talking to anonymous strangers than to friends. One student
told us that he sometimes added random people to his
online chat list to talk about things that bothered him.
When I'm talking to someone else and neither of us knows
who the other person is, there's no apprehension.
Whatever you want to say, you can just say it; you can go
ahead and vent some of your frustrations. (#31)
Strategies for attaining anonymity
Participants reported using both technical and behavioral
strategies to achieve anonymity. The most commonly used
technical method was to change one’s IP address.
Interviewees used proxy servers, VPNs, and anonymizing
systems like Tor to hide their home IP address, or they
changed their IP address manually. Two interviewees used
proxy servers every time they went online, and 15
interviewees applied proxies when participating in
potentially compromising activities such as torrenting,
accessing blocked sites, revealing sensitive information, or
browsing special forums (e.g., about hacking, politics, or
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health). Those with more advanced technical skills used
encryption to protect their information. For users with
lower technical abilities, one commonly used method was
to change browser settings or website-specific privacy
settings to control which other users had access to their
profiles. Most, however, said they did not bother because,
as one interviewee explained, the tools “are quite a bit of
trouble to use.” (#13)
All interviewees, regardless of their technical expertise,
used behavioral methods to hide their identity. Half of the
interviewees obtained anonymity within online
communities by not participating. They also limited the
information they shared online. Sixteen interviewees
reported sharing false information to maintain their
anonymity—providing a fictitious name, using a false
profile photo, and inventing biographical information when
other users asked for personal information.
We asked interviewees how effectively they had achieved
anonymity. We did not quiz them on their understanding of
the Internet, but many interviewees revealed an incorrect or
incomplete understanding of the Internet and anonymity.
For example, when discussing the private browsing
function of a web browser, interviewee #8 said she was not
sure whether it erased her traces from the computer she was
using or from the website she visited. Interviewees also
confused social anonymity (e.g., hiding name, location,
occupation, and so forth) with technical anonymity (e.g.,
hiding IP address or computer information). Many did not
understand that one can be anonymous within a particular
group or application but not anonymous to the ISP.
A few possessed greater understanding of the Internet and
distinguished between what members of a community knew
and what might be discovered about their Internet behavior
more generally. For instance, interviewee #21 said she was
unidentifiable in a particular online community because of
the steps she took to protect her identity (using a specific
pseudonym for that community, and not revealing personal
information to others), but she also said that there is no true
anonymity on the Internet because anyone with technical
expertise could find out who she was.
User-defined anonymity and full anonymity
Under Marx’s definition of anonymity, we found that few
achieved full anonymity even when they claimed to do so.
Most participants did not reveal their real name or location,
and many participants mentioned using pseudonyms to hide
their identity, which use would afford incomplete
protection. A few participants said that they used variations
of their names (#2, #9) or something important to them
(#10) in their pseudonyms, and they were aware that some
other users or website administrators could identify their
real identity from their pseudonyms. Other participants
purposefully used one-time or unique pseudonyms in their
attempts to be anonymous (e.g., a Taiwanese blogger, #41,
used a website to generate a temporary email address for
website registration). Some people reported creating
separate identities in different online communities to
prevent their friends in one group from learning of their
membership in another group. For example, the fandom
enthusiast (#16) used a consistent pseudonym for all
fandom-related activities that were “unconnected with my
real name.” Some others, however, used the same
identification information across communities or platforms,
which would provide clues to their real identity. Only a few
participants were aware that subtle patterns of behavior
across time and applications could identify them. The more-
aware fandom enthusiast employed different
communication patterns when talking with her online
friends and her friends in real life. One participant (#12)
said that revealing his expertise could identify him. He
explained that he maintained a variety of detailed personas,
one for each of his unique skill sets, in order to share his
expertise without compromising his anonymity.
Factors in the decision to be anonymous
Our study examined users’ experiences and understanding
of online anonymity. From the narratives interviewees told,
we gained some insight into their decision making
processes for choosing anonymity over revealing their real
identity.
The prior literature cited earlier suggests three factors that
may lead people to seek anonymity. These include technical
constraints and misunderstanding of the Internet, the online
community context, and personal privacy preferences (e.g.,
[34]). Our interviews with people about their experiences of
seeking anonymity exposed two other important factors that
influenced their activities and their strategies for attaining
anonymity: their prior negative experiences, and their desire
to manage the boundaries between their online and offline
worlds.
The role of prior experience
Prior negative experiences influenced interviewees’
perceptions of how using their real identity might pose a
threat and how anonymity would protect them from future
threats. Fifteen interviewees used anonymity because of a
prior unpleasant or frightening experience. A European
woman told us she used false information in every online
activity she participated in because she was once lured to
another country by online criminals who pretended to offer
her a job. She escaped, but the experience was terrifying.
My life was in danger… I was even afraid to go on the
Internet at that time. But... I learned a lot of things about
the Internet, and the most important, you don’t have to
use real information about yourself. (#19)
Two of our interviewees had been victims of a “human
flesh search” [35]. Interviewee #6 told us about a stalker
who searched for her personal information using her
username on a BBS. The stalker was able to trace that
username to many of her other online activities, including
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the forums she visited and the comments she had posted.
After the incident, this interviewee created unique
usernames for each of her accounts on different sites.
Another interviewee was a graduate student (#40) who
published some damaging information about a university
president candidate on a forum. The candidate’s supporters
retaliated by exposing all of the student’s personal
information, including his real name, school, and
department, and then spreading a false rumor that he was
not a real student.
Friends’ or other users’ prior experiences also influenced
people’s decisions. For example, a Chinese woman who
always shopped online using fake identity said,
Actually I'd used my real name before, but I heard of
stories like this: a retailer received a bad review, so she
posted the buyer’s identity information to the web and
said some very bad things about the buyer. So I started to
use fake names. (#8)
Having been attacked in the past was not correlated with
using a more effective or technical method for attaining
anonymity. Many interviewees did not have the technical
skills to avoid detection. The woman who had been lured
overseas by online criminals began to change her Internet
service provider every six months, believing that this action
anonymized her on the Internet.
Managing boundaries
Interviewees’ decisions to seek anonymity were often
influenced by their desire to control and manage the
boundaries between their different social networks, groups,
and environments. Interviewees often sought anonymity to
prevent conflict with friends or family, to maintain a
professional public image, or to avoid government
attention. They wanted to preserve separate identities in real
life and online, in different online groups, and in different
real life groups. The fan fiction writer with multiple
Facebook accounts told us that anonymity was particularly
important to her because her writing sometimes contained
adult content. As her job involved working with children,
she was afraid that people would censure her if they found
out she had authored erotic fiction.
When you work with kids, a lot of people feel like you
don't have a right to a personal life. You have to be a role
model at all times, even when you're not at work. (#17)
Twelve interviewees viewed anonymity as a way to protect
their real-life relationships. Potential risks to relationships
included opposing views, conflicts of interest, and loss of
trust. One Chinese interviewee said that she felt less
reluctant to post her political opinions on anonymous
forums than on social networking sites where friends could
identify her posts.
I've some friends who do not agree with my views.
Sometimes I criticized the government on Renren.com.
Then these friends would argue with me under my post. I
didn't want our friendship to be affected, so I didn't want
to express my views under my real name again. (#3)
Ninety-two percent of the interviewees who talked about
anonymity as a way to protect their real-life relationships
were from Eastern countries. We speculate that the
relational benefits of anonymity might be more important
for members of Eastern cultures, consistent with the
literature on communal societies and collectivism in
Eastern cultures [14].
Some interviewees wished to create boundaries between
different online activities. One interviewee had frequented a
website about preparing for zombie attacks. Because some
of the members liked to post pictures of the weapons they
owned, he was more cautious about disclosing personal
information on that site than on the game sites he visited:
In my head, there’s a big difference between video game
enthusiasts and firearm enthusiasts... whenever I was
interacting with the firearm enthusiasts, I wanted that
extra level of protection. Not that I thought everyone was
bad... I just happen to know all the guns they own. (#13)
Interviewees who liked to express different social identities
in different online settings often created and maintained
multiple IDs and personas to reflect how they wanted to
appear to work contacts, family and friends, or other
members of their online communities. They sought to keep
these personas separate by maintaining separate profiles
and social circles. One woman (#16) maintained separate
email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts for fandom activities
and for communicating with real-life friends and
colleagues. Another interviewee (#36) told us he kept two
Flickr accounts, one for his friends and another he used
only to share photos with his parents and older relatives.
Interviewees also used anonymity to manage restrictions in
the online environment such as government policies that
blocked content. When the websites that participants
wanted to browse violated government policy restrictions,
interviewees sometimes chose to browse anonymously.
Other interviewees in this situation, however, decided not to
be anonymous in order to appear “normal” (see [28]). One
man told us that he liked to visit subversive websites out of
curiosity but would never register or post for fear of
drawing government suspicion.
I just want to be perceived as a harmless voyeur of this
stuff, because to me it's like spy novel stuff, and.... I don't
have the money to defend myself if some overzealous
cyberauthority sees me doing more than browsing. (#22)
Prior experiences and the wish to control and manage the
boundaries of their social worlds influenced how
interviewees thought about the costs and benefits of
anonymity and identifiability.
Session: Consent and Privacy
CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France
2663

Tradeoffs between anonymity and identifiability
Nearly all of our interviewees (86%) held both positive and
negative attitudes about anonymity. Two advocated
anonymity as a right and felt that it was essential to privacy
and security in the digital age. Twelve said that anonymity
could be misused and could allow irresponsible behavior
without consequences for the perpetrators, but would not
give up their rights to be anonymous because of their own
situations.
Ten interviewees thought seeking anonymity as a general
online strategy was a futile pursuit because advances in
computing and use of digital data have made anonymity
virtually impossible across applications. These participants
were concerned about hackers, the government, and
unknown others capturing their IP address and tracking
them down. They expressed concerns about personal
information being used by third parties such as proxy or
torrent server owners. One government employee felt very
strongly that although anonymity is essential for privacy
and security, it is exceedingly difficult to achieve:
We, to a large degree, live in a post-privacy world, where
if you know how, you can find out anything about anyone.
(#12)
Table 2 summarizes the balance of factors that interviewees
recalled retrospectively about their choice to be anonymous
or identified. Tradeoffs included expanding the diversity of
their Internet associations versus protecting their image and
relationships, freely expressing their opinions versus
maintaining their credibility, and getting useful,
personalized recommendations versus receiving spam.
DISCUSSION
The Internet increasingly reveals much about people to each
other and to third parties [29]. This trend makes it more
pressing that we decide whether anonymity should be easier
or more difficult to attain, and whether the usability of
anonymity tools should be improved.
Policy and design questions
Our results show that people from all walks of life had
reason, at one time or another, to seek anonymity. A main
policy tradeoff is that discouraging anonymity will
discourage malicious behavior (about half of the incidents
in our data) but will also discourage people from engaging
in creative, helpful, and harmless online activities that they
might otherwise pursue. Many people would be prevented
from managing personal threat and their social boundaries
because identifiability increases the bleeding of social
information across time, place, and group.
Current Internet design allows for anonymity at the
application level (e.g., within a website), but anonymity
across applications (especially in some countries) is very
difficult to achieve for most users. Further, the demographic
information or content that users reveal can be linked across
applications and cause them to be identified even if their
legal name, email address, and IP address are hidden. An
important policy question is whether Internet users should
have stronger controls on their levels of anonymity, and
whether the risks of anonymity outweigh its benefits. In this
paper, we examined only the risks and benefits for
individuals rather than for communities or the society as a
whole. Recent world events, such as the rapid spread of a
viral incendiary video, suggest that the freedom of
Category
Advantages of being anonymous
Advantages of being identified
Social connections
Avoid disliked others
Avoid commitment to the community
Lower barrier to new relationships
Protect others one cares about
Connect to real life friends
Have stronger social connections
Encourages more participation
Reputation and trust
Give honest rating/ recommendation
Good for reputation building
Gain trust from other users
Image building
Have control over personal image
Avoid embarrassment /judgment
/criticism
Avoid harsh criticism
Consistent with self-image
Emotional benefit
Feel relax and comfortable
Feel cool and sophisticated
Feel real, integrated
Feel closer to people
Express opinion
Feel free to express views
Avoid irresponsible behavior
Privacy
Have more control over personal
information disclosure
Look innocent
Security
Protect personal safety
Avoid legal repercussion/spam/stalk/lost
of property
Hide in the crowd
Ease of use
Saves effort to log in
Easy to remember account
Table 2. Perceived tradeoffs of being anonymous vs. being identified
Session: Consent and Privacy
CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France
2664

individuals to act anonymously will need to be balanced
against societal effects.
Forty-five percent of our interviewees expressed
uncertainty about what might happen to them or their data
online. They also did not have an accurate understanding of
how their personal information could be accessed by others
and which information would be disclosed. Interviewee #16
mentioned concerns about her practice of entering her
telephone number in multiple accounts, and whether that
behavior connected her multiple identities. She avoided
using sites that did this.
I think the threat for me is mostly that Google would
accidentally associate my two accounts. (#16)
Our findings suggest we should institute higher standards
for telling people what use others are making of their data
and what information is actually disclosed to others when
they try to hide their identity via pseudonyms or other
means (see [19, 21]). Interviewees noted the absence of
user-friendly tools for achieving anonymity. Some
complained that existing proxy servers were too slow or
difficult to use. Others did not know how to use anonymity
tools at all. If we want to support anonymity as an option
online, then we must improve the usability of tools for
achieving anonymity.
Online communities will sometimes want to offer
anonymity for some or all members. Such communities will
probably need to develop strong norms and moderation or
sanctioning processes to support prosocial behavior and
prevent destructive behavior [15]. Online pseudonyms
allow users to build reputations inside single communities
or websites such as eBay while keeping their real identities
hidden. However, our interviewees sometimes wanted to
build reputations across different online platforms. We
suggest that new mechanisms might provide better
solutions for users attempting to balance their safety
concerns with their desire for widespread recognition.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Although the diverse demographic and technical skills of
our sample provided us with a snapshot of anonymous
Internet use in different cultures, government policy areas,
and knowledge contexts, our sample was not a
representative sample of the population of Internet users.
Limited by our interview approach, we were also unable to
examine how users’ strategies align with their actual
anonymity levels. Further research will require a more
representative sample and a more fine-grained approach to
find out how Internet users in general define and seek
anonymity.
Our sample and the study design did not allow us to
distinguish political from cultural factors in motivations for
anonymity. People in countries whose governments censor
the Internet say they execute self-censorship and may avoid
seeking anonymity explicitly so as not to cast suspicion on
themselves [28], but cultural factors, such as a cultural
belief in respect for authority, could be at work as well. In
our study, Chinese interviewees weighed relational factors
especially heavily when choosing to hide their identity.
They also were more suspicious than other interviewees
about information being used against them by officials,
vendors, and strangers, and many did not register on
websites when they avoid doing so. Our finding echoes
other work suggesting that Chinese users are particularly
likely to falsify their identity on online social network sites
[36]. This behavior could be due to political or cultural
beliefs, or to biases in our sampling. In our future work we
plan to investigate this question further.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Support for this work was provided by NSF grants
CNS1040801 and CNS1221006.
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