Can One Live Anonymously?

I've spent the last few months working with an excellent journalist on the Anonymity Experiment, which will appear in this month's Popular Science magazine. In it, Catherine Price attempts to live a normal life without revealing personal data:

...when this magazine suggested I try my own privacy experiment, I eagerly agreed. We decided that I would spend a week trying to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. I would attempt what many believe is now impossible: to hide in plain sight.

[...]

Tall and friendly, Hoofnagle has an enthusiastic way of talking about privacy violations that could best be described as "cheerful outrage." He laid out my basic tasks: Pay for everything in cash. Don't use my regular cellphone, landline or e-mail account. Use an anonymizing service to mask my Web surfing. Stay away from government buildings and airports (too many surveillance cameras), and wear a hat and sunglasses to foil cameras I can't avoid. Don't use automatic toll lanes. Get a confetti-cut paper shredder for sensitive documents and junk mail. Sign up for the national do-not-call registry (ignoring, if you can, the irony of revealing your phone number and e-mail address to prevent people from contacting you), and opt out of prescreened credit offers. Don't buy a plane ticket, rent a car, get married, have a baby, purchase land, start a business, go to a casino, use a supermarket loyalty card, or buy nasal decongestant. By the time I left Hoofnagle's office, a week was beginning to sound like a very long time.

Her week is very interesting, and she experiences some funny anecdotes in buying a wireless phone anonymously, getting to and from San Francisco, and using the internet with anonymous proxies. Worth a read!

More like this

"Stay away from government buildings and airports (too many surveillance cameras)"

She wouldn't be able to do this in London then...

Can One Live Anonymously?

Yes.

By anonymous (not verified) on 12 Feb 2008 #permalink

I keep thinking that eventually someone in my hometown is going to recognize me from online due to my work ... I know this wasn't exactly about that kind of thing, but still. It is tough to keep things private anymore, online, offline, anywhere ...

By Sophie Hirschfeld (not verified) on 12 Feb 2008 #permalink

Can One Live Anonymously?

Yes.

Right, what's that person's IP and email address?

If they didn't use a proxy and fake email, they should be unmasked for failing to live up to their claims.

Bob

They said you can, they didn't say that they were, themselves.

By Sophie Hirschfeld (not verified) on 12 Feb 2008 #permalink

For a week? Perhaps. For a month? You're gonna have trouble when it comes to time to pay the rent / mortgage.

I have complete online anonyminity, when I want to use it. Its turned off right now, but its only a few clicks away.

There are occasionally times when I wish to use it.

that list of things to do to stay anonymous pretty much describes my life anyway, and i'm not even trying to stay anonymous --- i just thought i was taking reasonable precautions to keep my life to myself, no more.

well, okay, i don't own a hat and i use my debit card instead of cash everywhere. but i had seriously been thinking about going to cash-only to protect my bank account, and i had wondered what i might look like in a hat...

By Nomen Nescio (not verified) on 14 Feb 2008 #permalink

and using the internet with anonymous proxies

Good lord; who doesn't believe that anonymizers are honeypots? This is 2008, post-clipper era. What's all this fight in congress over granting immunity to telco's about anyway?

Anonymity only works if the people you interact with respect your desire for it. The state of anonymity only has meaning in a social context as you interact with others.

"who doesn't believe that anonymizers are honeypots?"

Oh, of course! Half of tor are running taps, thats common knowledge. Or should be. Thats why you combine multi-level proxies with end-to-end encryption.

Some more paranoid websites - espicially bittorrent services - disable all logging for the benefit of their users so there can be nothing to find in a raid.

I keep thinking that eventually someone in my hometown is going to recognize me from online due to my work ... I know this wasn't exactly about that kind of thing, but still. It is tough to keep things private anymore, online, offline, anywhere ...