Why do people seek anonymity on the internet?

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.

The Economics of Privacy

“…In fact, the observation that people seem not to protect their privacy online very aggressively does not justify the conclusion that they never do so. Tsai et al (2011) find that consumers are, sometimes, willing to pay a price premium to purchase goods from more privacy-protective merchants; Goldfarb and Tucker (2012b) use surveys to measure respondents' implied concern for privacy by their willingness to disclose information about income, and find evidence of privacy concerns increasing over an eight-year period; Stutzman, Gross, and Acquisti (2012) find evidence of increasing privacy-seeking behavior among a sample of over 4,000 early Facebook members; Kang, Brown, and Kiesler (2013) document Internet users' attempts to maintain anonymity online; and Boyd and Marwick (2011) discuss various alternative strategies teenagers adopt to protect their privacy while engaging in online sharing.…”

Community Building with Co-located Social Media

“…Whisper 4 ) to non-anonymous (e.g. Twi er 5 ) social media, found that anonymity also implies more personal information, more negative emotions (anger and sadness) and more messages about wants and needs, in addition to increased interaction [32]. However, from our experiments, we adopt similar usage strategies to western classrooms and nd many similarities in the a itudes of participants towards the app, e.g.…”

“…However, it is a challenge to build an inclusive digital channel that increases the number of active participants, as interaction on social media is generally divided into many content consumers with only a few contributors [57]. Anonymity is a feature that can be integrated to address this by making users more comfortable in expressing views virtually that they would not share face-to-face [32].…”

“…Anonymity could be regarded as an enhancing factor that in uences participation by allowing people to overcome shyness [32] and power di erences within refugee community as well as with aid agencies [33]. Furthermore, anonymity is also seen as an intriguing feature, and participants disclosed their intention to guess who posted certain messages.…”

A Smartphone Intervention for Cycle Commuting

“…Those cycle-commuters are related by what they share in common but unknown to each other. The app is aimed at creating a form of conversation that enables its users to freely express to each other in the comprehension that they might never meet again [16] [17]. This comprehension, however, intends to intrigue the thought of who and where the users really are to maintain the surprising freshness.…”