You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Relative Anonymity in Cyberspace

Abstract

Cyberspace is changing the way we communicate, live and interact. Most significantly, it changes the nature of anonymous communication. In the physical world we all have a reasonable understanding of how anonymity can be achieved, but cyberspace was not designed to work the same way as real space. Machine communications contain information which identifies their originating machine, and internet service providers (ISPs), internet businesses and online social networks (OSN) can often identify users via the information that users disclose to them. As such, once users communicate online for the first time their anonymity starts to become compromised. Most discussions about anonymity assume that anonymity has some binary, on/off value. They ignore that the way we communicate has been changed by cyberspace; and also overlook the fact that even individual users are often able to identify someone by simply collecting and connecting the information available online. This means that users who freely decided to make information available online in a particular situation, where that information is available to the masses, cannot expect not to be named in another different situation. In the digital age, users are living in an anonymity limbo2 where they may not yet be named but can potentially become so at any time. As such, it seems inevitable that this new reality around anonymity will have implications on the two concepts often linked to it: autonomy and consent.