anonymiser : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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anonymiser

An anonymiser lets you send anonymous email or post anoynmously to newsgroups. Simply posting under a phony name gives you next to no anonymity. I can’t think of any legitimate reasons for sending anonymous email, except to warn someone of a threat. The reasons for posting anonymously to newsgroups include:

To avoid reprisals from people who don’t want your message heard. The most common reprisals are telephone death threats to you and/or your family.
To make people focus on your message, not on who said it.
To deceive people into thinking there is more support for your position than there actually is.
To camouflage your vested interests, e.g. the name of the company you work for.
To attract the attention of the authorities.

Anonymisers protect you only from being known to the general public. They won’t protect you from organisations such as the Taliban or the CIA. The conservative assumption is that anonymisers are run by the CIA/TIA, or will quickly cave into pressure from such. The same applies to any anonymising software.

People eventually give themselves away by accidentally posting an anonymous message without an anonymiser, or by accidentally posting an ordinary message anonymously, or even by their style, spelling and vocabulary.

You can find anonymiser sites with google. Most are hard to use. Most are awkward to use. I have no idea how to judge how trustworthy each one is.

Anonymous.to: lets you set up a free anonymous web-based email account. They insist on knowing your real name and email account though
Ultimate Anonymizer: information on anonymity

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