alt Hacker NewsYou need a person's text with their actual identity to pull that off. Normally that's pretty hard, especially since you'll get different formats. Like I don't write the same way on Twitter as HN. But yeah, this stuff has been advancing and I don't think it is okay.
The AOL scandal pretty much proved that anonymity is a mirage. You may think you are anonymous but it just takes combining a few unrelated databases to de-anonymize you. HN users think they are anonymous but they're not, they drop factoids all over the place about who they are. 33 bits... it is one of my recurring favorite themes and anybody in the business of managing other people's data should be well aware of the risks.