It is getting increasingly difficult to retain one’s privacy in today’s hyper-connected environment and maintain an anonymous living.

Imagine entering a room full of people you don’t know. Maybe you’ve just arrived in a new town. You have no acquaintances, and you have no acquaintances.

You have complete freedom to do anything you want and live anonymously.

Where to begin

You don’t have to worry about being judged or scrutinized by your friends or colleagues. You’re energized by the prospect of living on your terms and at your own pace.

But whatever your feelings, you’d be safe knowing that you won’t be watched or followed by a distant company or individual, right? Not being able to live anonymously.

Wrong. As soon as you enter that space, you’ll experience anonymity, a social phenomenon that grants you privacy and independence. However, it will be all but extinct in 2024.

It’s become one of our generation’s most pressing issues: “How should we ensure national security while enhancing our lives through technology while protecting a fundamental right to privacy and anonymous living that feels as though it has been since the dawn of time?”

We’ve stopped caring, thanks to the internet.

Anonymity, which is Greek for “no name,” is a psychological phenomenon unique to humans. It is the idea that while we all have identities to give to the world, we can turn them off and work in complete obscurity under specific conditions.

” To traverse the social world of family, friends, peers, and coworkers, we need a public self,” says John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in New Jersey and author of The Psychology of Cyberspace.

“But we also require a private self, an interior space where we may dwell on our thoughts and feelings without being influenced by others, where we can simply be with our psyche.” Both play a role in shaping our personalities. Our well-being can quickly be interrupted if one or the other is missing.”

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania published a study in 2013 that involved in-depth interviews with dozens of internet users across four continents.

For example, one interviewee established an anonymous online forum for English learners to practice their language abilities. They could better handle various aspects of their lives due to their anonymity and anonymous living.

One participant stated that he used message boards to assist people with technical issues, but the Internet’s detached character allowed him to avoid unwelcome obligations. Furthermore, anonymity in a public setting such as the Internet can help protect personal security.

Anonymity

The 44 participants “had motivation, at one point or another, to seek anonymity,” the researchers stated. However, according to Pew Research Center’s 2013 research, while most internet users desire to remain anonymous, most do not believe it is attainable.

According to the report, 59 percent of internet users in the United States feel that concealing one’s identity online is impossible. While some people take basic precautions to protect their anonymity, such as erasing their browsing history, many users who claim to cherish anonymity aren’t doing so.

A meta-analysis conducted earlier this year in the Journal of Communication examined the “privacy paradox,” or the idea that while individuals value privacy, they don’t do much to protect it in practice.

Our approach to privacy has become more casual. One could argue that not disclosing at least some information is even harmful. Career advisors worldwide stress the value of having a fully fleshed-out public LinkedIn photo that includes your name, headshot, employment history, and other details.

Maybe it’s more of societal warming of previously rigid attitudes. For the first time, I recall going online. It was the 1990s, and I was working on my father’s computer with my new identity.

In those days, internet service providers took tremendous pains to prevent customers from disclosing the most basic information in their public profiles, such as their first name, city, or gender.

Personal Information

Personal information is quickly and massively disseminated across the internet, frequently without our consent: geotagged selfies of ourselves and loved ones on Instagram.

Even though the victims of their harassment might click on their real names and genuine images to see who they are, social media users engage in political spats and nasty remarks. People often regard the internet as a fictitious world with no natural limits, a place not to be taken seriously—John Suler.

People’s comfort with the internet has developed to the point where information sharing can be thoughtless or reckless in just a few short years. Call it privacy weariness, but as our reliance on smartphones and social media has grown, some have developed a somewhat lax attitude toward remaining completely anonymous.

But what if you’re one of those people who avoid Facebook even with a new identity, doesn’t use social media, and goes to extraordinary measures to leave a little digital footprint? Sorry, your privacy is in jeopardy, as well.

Off-grid living isn’t a viable option.

While not having a Facebook profile is an intelligent method to disengage, there are still ways for others to figure out who you are.

According to Paul Ohm, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, there’s “intentional anonymity” and “inferential anonymity,” with the former referring to the data that a Google-savvy sleuth can “infer” from you online, that is, dig up loads of personal information about you based on a single fact.

On gaining ultimate anonymity in 2022, Ohm says, “It’s becoming increasingly evident that it’s a losing game.” “If someone knows something about you, they can probably find out more about you, and they can do it much more successfully than they have in the past.”

If you’re a party pooper on social media, it’s possible that former flames or long-lost classmates won’t be able to locate you.

Invisible

However, this does not make you invisible to large organizations or the government.” It’s a lot tougher to be anonymous now than it was 20 years ago, at least from the most prominent firms and the government,” says Peter Swire, a law and ethics professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who served on US President Barack Obama’s Intelligence and Communications Technology Review Group.

President Donald Trump of the United States approved legislation earlier this year repealing requirements that internet service providers obtain customers’ consent before collecting and sharing personal data such as web browsing history and app usage.

Surveillance

According to Swire, we’re in a “golden age of surveillance.” Looking up financial data, medical records, online history, or call history if you’re a person of interest in an inquiry is simple.

However, in an age of cybersecurity breaches and digital services that keep your bank information and home addresses on file, this points to a wider, more serious privacy risk.

Nowadays, it’s difficult to go unnoticed. Then there’s this: Your location, according to Ohm, is the “next great frontier in advertising.”

Websites can tailor advertisements to your preferences based on previous web searches or websites viewed on the same device. Companies and advertisers, on the other hand, are pursuing technology and business partnerships that can track your specific location in real time for ‘personalized’ advertising.

For instance, a coupon for a retailer half a mile away could appear on your phone’s screen. Going entirely off the grid is almost tricky unless you’re willing to live without the internet or any smart device.”Swire declares, “This is an awful moment to be a spy.” In other words, it isn’t easy to maintain anonymity even for those whose job it is.

Even so, there are many situations in which anonymity is brutal, if not downright deadly.

Is anonymity’s demise beneficial? According to Swire, anonymity is a novel concept that arose with the growth of cities. As a result, we’ve spent far more time without it than with it.”

In the days of yore, anonymity didn’t exist in tiny communities,” Swire adds, referring to a time when everyone knew everyone else’s business. “City life, to some extent, fostered anonymity.

Urban hiding

Today, even in a large city, every one of us leaves breadcrumbs for an investigator to follow.”There’s a terrible side to anonymity.

In the same Carnegie Mellon survey, 53% of participants admitted to engaging in “socially undesirable actions” such as hacking or harassing other internet users “activities,” such as browsing websites depicting violence or pornography or illegally downloading data.

While most people wish to protect sensitive information such as bank accounts and medical records, there are hints that some people are willing to sacrifice complete anonymity for the greater good.

Meanwhile, YouGov, an internet market research organization, revealed in a survey last year that over half of Britons polled agreed that “more should be done to help the security forces resist terrorism, even if this means regular people’s privacy suffers. Attempts to entirely anonymize our operations are, in any event, largely futile:

With the rise of the Internet of Things, a growing number of the gadgets we use daily will require our personal information to work, and they will become increasingly intertwined with our lives.”There’s a massive disconnect,” says Ohm.

Anonymity appears to be eroding. Even so, the experts offer some advice on protecting your privacy as much as possible.

You can employ best practices.

According to a Pew poll released earlier this year, most Americans don’t trust huge organizations like the government or social media companies to preserve their personal information. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t follow best practices to protect online identities. What are some of the most effective techniques?

Keep your passwords secure by creating separate ones for each service and making them difficult to guess. However, if your reputation is more important than hacking, a little common sense can help.

Use the front-page test to see if you’re on the right track. Don’t send messages or emails with comments that would disturb you if they appeared on the newspaper’s front page.

Swire recommends that you “follow the front-page test.” Don’t write anything in messages or emails that would appear on the newspaper’s front page.” That is the advice I provide to intelligence services and ordinary people.

While some people may not mind third parties or governments watching their shopping habits, they will value anonymity when it comes to people they engage with daily.

Emails

You might not care if a busy bureaucrat can access those gossipy emails, but you would if your employer saw them. Your chats will be more private and difficult to track if you use encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp.

It will necessitate societal transformation. Governments, advertisers, and IT companies worldwide will need to agree on a common ethical framework. Customers can choose to temporarily opt out of their public-facing identities and digital services.

“We all need some private area where we can keep our deepest dreams and worst fantasies hidden from other people. Allowing us to grow as individuals, to test out different thoughts and different sides of ourselves,” Swire explains. “Because of the internet, nothing has changed.”

If you need anonymous living, contact Amicus International Consulting and let us handle it.