“If you need absolute anonymity, don’t use the Internet” is the recommendation of InfoWorld although many Internet users believe that they can obscure their Internet identity. InfoWorld gave the following 6 reasons why no “…service or product can claim to give you absolute privacy or anonymity”:
Reason No. 1: Your location is traceable
Reason No. 2: Your cloak has holes
Reason No. 3: A password is still a password
Reason No. 4: You don’t really know where your packets are
Reason No. 5: People make mistakes
Reason No. 6: You don’t really know who you’re talking to
Just to expand on one topic – passwords which most people take for granted InfoWorld made these observations:
The weakest link in most security software isn’t the code. It’s usually the password protecting the private keys….
Unfortunately, most users choose relatively weak passwords. Even those who enter what they think are strong passwords are fooling themselves — and it’s inherently easier to guess a user’s password than it is to try and crack the private key that does the protecting.
Surely we will see more litigation over anonymous postings, and those confident anonymous posters who think they have anonymity will be surprised to learn anonymity does not exist on the Internet.