alt Hacker NewsI'm not sure the practical implications are as dramatic as the paper suggests. Most adversaries who would want to deanonymize people at scale (governments, corporations) already have access to far more direct methods. The people most at risk from this are probably activists and whistleblowers in jurisdictions where those direct methods aren't available, not average users.
Replies
I actually think those most at risk are normal people the activists will harass. Soon it will be possible for anybody who works at the “wrong” business or expresses any opinion on any subject to be casus belli for unhinged, terminally online, mentally ill people who are mad about the thing of the day to start making threatening calls to your employer or making false reports to police or sending deep fake porn to your mom.
I think that we are close to a time where the Internet is so toxic and so policed that the only reasonable response is to unplug.
> Most adversaries who would want to deanonymize people at scale (governments, corporations) already have access to far more direct methods.
Easier methods probably means more adversaries.
I can imagine a lot of countries who want to control what their citizens say abroad. I know Iraq in Saddam Hussein's time did it in the UK, China does it now.
People who comment about their boss and workplaces?
People on HN who talk about their work but want to remain anonymous? People who don’t want to be spammed if they comment in a community? Or harassed if they comment in a community? Maybe someone doesn’t want others to find out they are posting in r/depression. (Or r/warhammer.)
Anonymity is a substantial aspect of the current internet. It’s the practical reason you can have a stance against age verification.
On the other hand, if anonymity can be pierced with relative ease, then arguments for privacy are non sequiturs.
deanonymizing the people who deanonymize people at scale
Attacks can be chained, and this can all be automated. For example, imagine pigbutchering scams... except it's there, similar to some voice-cloning scams, just to get enough data to stylometrically fingerprint you for future reference. You make sure to never comment too much or spicily under your real name, but someone slides into your DMs with a thoughtful, informative, high-quality comment, and you politely strike up an interesting conversation which goes well and you think nothing of it and have forgotten it a week later - and 5 years later you're in jail or fired or have been doxed or been framed. 'Direct methods' can't deliver that kind of capability post hoc, even for actors who do have access to those methods (which is a vanishing percentage of all actors). No one has cheap enough intelligence and skilled labor to do this right now. But they will.