a PSA about accounts on LW/EAF/the internet often not being as anonymous as people think could be good, and mention stylometry, internet archives, timezones, IP addresses, user agents, browser storage; and suggest using TOR, making a new account for every post/comment, scheduling messages at random times, running comments through LLMs, not using your name or leaking information in other ways, and considering using deliberate disinformation (e.g. pretending to be of the opposite gender, scheduling messages to appear to be in a different timezone, …)
A lot of this depends on your threat model. For example, “IP addresses, user agents, browser storage; and suggest using TOR” aren’t much of a concern if you’re mostly just trying to avoid people who read your comments identifying you. But there is subtlety here, including that while you might trust the people running a forum you might not trust everyone who could legally get them to disclose this information.
Possibly, I think I might be less optimistic that people can/will, in practice, start changing their posting habits.
I also do expect my post here to change people’s posting habits, though I suspect an embarrassing public linking of an alt to a main (where someone was doing something like criticizing a rival) would do even more.
It reminds me a bit of the tradeoffs you mentioned in your previous post on security culture.
Definitely! I think this one is pretty well within where computer security culture has the appropriate norms, though.
A lot of this depends on your threat model. For example, “IP addresses, user agents, browser storage; and suggest using TOR” aren’t much of a concern if you’re mostly just trying to avoid people who read your comments identifying you. But there is subtlety here, including that while you might trust the people running a forum you might not trust everyone who could legally get them to disclose this information.
Maybe, though note that getting it out in the open allows us talking about ways to fix it, including things like convenient stylometry-thwarting tooling.
I also do expect my post here to change people’s posting habits, though I suspect an embarrassing public linking of an alt to a main (where someone was doing something like criticizing a rival) would do even more.
Definitely! I think this one is pretty well within where computer security culture has the appropriate norms, though.