Weve thrown open the doors for the study of writing-style based deanonymization that can be carried out on an Internet-wide scale, and our research demonstrates that the threat is already real. We believe that our techniques are valuable by themselves as well.
The good news for authors who would like to protect themselves against deanonymization, it appears that manually changing ones style is enough to throw off these attacks. Developing fully automated methods to hide traces of ones writing style remains a challenge. For now, few people are aware of the existence of these attacks and defenses; all the sensitive text that has already been anonymously written is also at risk of deanonymization. Posts on Free Republic. Could they "deanonymize"?
1 posted on
02/21/2012 10:19:15 AM PST by
FourPeas
To: FourPeas
2 posted on
02/21/2012 10:20:25 AM PST by
Larry Lucido
(My doctor told me to curtail my Walpoling activities.)
To: FourPeas
Protect your privacy: Plagiarize!
3 posted on
02/21/2012 10:22:21 AM PST by
Joe 6-pack
(Que me amat, amet et canem meum)
To: FourPeas
Who wrote Dreams Of My Father?
To: FourPeas
Let’s deanonymize “Dreams from my Father” and see which Chicago silver ponytail crawls out from under the rock.
5 posted on
02/21/2012 10:24:06 AM PST by
Joe the Pimpernel
(Islam is a religion of peace, and Moslems reserve the right to dismember anyone who says otherwise.)
To: FourPeas
This calls for an anonymizing feature much like spell-check, that randomly substitutes synonyms for all the words in everything you write.
Sort of like babelfish only the output language is the same as the input language.
Or you could just bablefish English to German and back to English again!
Anything resembling a coherent sentence strictly coincidental.
6 posted on
02/21/2012 10:28:23 AM PST by
Joe the Pimpernel
(Islam is a religion of peace, and Moslems reserve the right to dismember anyone who says otherwise.)
To: FourPeas
"Could they "deanonymize"? "
Absolutely.
7 posted on
02/21/2012 10:31:23 AM PST by
Paladin2
To: FourPeas
Consider two words that are nearly interchangeable, say since and because. Different people use the two words in a differing proportion. By comparing the relative frequency of the two words, you get a little bit of information about a person...Some use the words correctly. Others don't.
"Since" refers to time:
"Since Obama was elected, America has gone to Hell in a handbasket."
But "because" doesn't refer to time:
"Because Obama was elected, America has gone to Hell in a handbasket."
Different meanings.
Uh, oh. I've just realized I've been deanomyz... deanonymousi... de-anyonim................... outed!
Yikes!
8 posted on
02/21/2012 10:32:18 AM PST by
Flycatcher
(God speaks to us, through the supernal lightness of birds, in a special type of poetry.)
To: FourPeas
...First they came for the verbose, pedantic, pricks but I didn't speak out because I wasn't...
oh crap
10 posted on
02/21/2012 10:39:22 AM PST by
Jack of all Trades
(Hold your face to the light, even though for the moment you do not see.)
To: FourPeas
One probably can identify posters based on linguistic analysis. But I don’t think that it is as easy as one might think at first glance.
I can remember a few years back trying to identify some liberal posters based upon rather peculiar phrases that they used. I was unable to do so. It could be that some of the more “sore thumb” type of posters aren’t actually famous enough to warrant a lot of results in a google search.
I don’t use my real name. I’m not exactly famous either. But there are a lot of people who post online who know who I am. Others, with a little bit of detective work, could easily detemine my identity without going into linguistic analysis.
I used to be concerned a little about that. No longer. It’s kind of liberating. Plus, it’s helpful to understand that not that many people really care except those who love you (plus the few who hate you).
To: FourPeas
It deanonymized Ted Kaczinski (sp?).
13 posted on
02/21/2012 10:45:44 AM PST by
DuncanWaring
(The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
To: FourPeas
This doesn’t work all the time. I was reading a story and the phrase “I’d hit it” came up. I naturally assumed it was LAZ, but, it turns out, it was Derek Jeter talking about baseball. Unless LAZ is Derek Jeter?????????
14 posted on
02/21/2012 11:07:37 AM PST by
blueunicorn6
("A crack shot and a good dancer")
To: FourPeas
Seems like, if deanonymization could be refined to be, in effect, a linguistic fingerprint, it would also be possible to smear someone by “translating” self-incriminating text into his distinctive style.
16 posted on
02/21/2012 11:59:55 AM PST by
Hunton Peck
(See my FR homepage for a list of businesses that support WI Gov. Scott Walker)
To: FourPeas; CodeToad; hiredhand; Eaker; Squantos; Joe Brower
I assume that every key stroke I have made since Day One is fully searchable and attributable, and that I might someday be grilled under bright lights about this or that post I once made.
To do otherwise, is foolish IMHO.
18 posted on
02/21/2012 12:24:41 PM PST by
Travis McGee
(www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
To: FourPeas
Oh yeah? Deanonymize THIS!
20 posted on
02/21/2012 4:48:47 PM PST by
Colinsky
To: FourPeas
Well, the next time I see someone use the word “deanonymize,” I’ll know who it is.
22 posted on
02/22/2012 5:30:52 AM PST by
HIDEK6
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