How to be Anonymous Online (7 page)

Investigators are not always so lucky as to have a list of suspects from which to identify an author. This scenario was tested by a team of researchers who mined writeprints from an email database in which all emails were anonymous, and no suspects were given. The researchers extracted each email's writeprint. With that, they grouped the emails by their respective authors (example: suppose there were 100 emails, they determined 30 emails were by one author, 20 by another and 50 by a third). Once each author's emails were grouped, creating a larger body of work per author, a more accurate writeprint was extracted [2]. No further attempt was made to identify each author's true identity, but, one can only imagine what an entity with large resources and supercomputers scouring the web could do with the “more accurate” writeprints.

In another project, researchers extracted unknown authors writeprints from individual, anonymous blog posts. The writeprints were matched against a database of 100,000 non-anonymous blogs (2.4 million blog posts in total). With no further personal investigative work and strictly using open source software, the researchers were able to identify successfully the authors 7.5% of the time. When the researchers extracted an unknown authors writeprints using three anonymous blogs posts, the success rate grew to 25%. Even when writeprinting failed to match unknown authors to their non-anonymous blogs, the field of possibilities was often narrowed from 100,000 to 20 [3].

Given the previous research, let's play out a scenario that applies existing technology:

• An anonymous whistleblower named Sam is one of ACME Corporation's 100,000 employees.
  
• Sam anonymously writes an open letter to The News Network Times detailing the evil doings of ACME Corporation.
  
• Sam is thrilled to find The News Network Times publishes his open letter. The whistle is officially blown!
  
• ACME Corporation hires investigators to identify the whistleblower.
  
• Using existing software, the investigators writeprint Sam's letter and run it against ACME Corporation's database of emails from its 100,000 employees.
  
• Depending on the length of Sam's letter, we can project that there is a 7.5% to 20% chance the writeprinting software identifies Sam as the whistleblower.
  

Realistically, the investigators are going to be more thorough. The scenario will probably go more like this:

• An anonymous whistleblower named Sam is one of ACME Corporation's 100,000 employees.
  
• Sam anonymously writes an open letter to The News Network Times revealing ACME Corporation's secret toxic waste dump in Tumangang City.
  
• Sam is thrilled to find The News Network Times publishes his open letter. The whistle is officially blown!
  
• ACME Corporation hires investigators to identify the whistleblower.
  
• From the subject of the letter, it is clear that Sam is one of the 900 employees that have worked in Tumangang City since 2006.
  
• Using existing software, the investigators writeprint Sam's letter and run it against ACME Corporation's database of emails from those 900 employees.
  

Given this scenario, there is probably a much greater than 7.5% to 20% chance that the software correctly identifies Sam from the 900 employees. There is probably a near 100% chance that the writeprinting software can narrow the field to 20 suspects, of which Sam is included. From these 20 suspects, traditional investigative techniques can probably weed out Sam as the whistleblower.

This scenario might be hypothetical, but, it is not unrealistic.

You have an advantage over Sam in that you know writeprints exist. As such, you will not be naive when you send that letter exposing the toxic waste dump in Tumangang City. Moreover, since you are a genius, you can wear your leather writer gloves so your prints do not end up all over the net.

IMPORTANT
– You should not mask your writeprints in your daily life. You only mask them when you need to be anonymous. You do not want to alter your non-anonymous writeprints and end up with them matching your anonymous ones.

A few techniques you can apply to anonymize writing:

• Put your writing through online language translators.
  DO NOT rely on translators as the sole method of masking writeprints
  . Writeprinters can detect the use of online translators and the languages used. From there, it is occasionally possible to reverse translate the writing to extract a writeprint [4,5]
  
• Write in short sentences to minimize the expression of your personality and the ability for writeprinters to match average sentence length to your daily writing [6].
  
• Write at an average level of intelligence, not at your physics Ph. D. level of intelligence [6]
  
• Do not use fancy words or elaborate descriptions. Favorite adjectives, rarely used words and consistent choices among words with many synonyms can be matched to your real life writing (Example: don't say he is mindless, dopey, idiotic, nonsensical, rash or half-baked. Just say he's fucking stupid) [6]
  
• Do not write in paragraphs. Writeprinters will compare average paragraph length to that of your daily writing [5]
  
• Write less than 250 words. Writeprinters want at least 500 words to pull an accurate writeprint. The 500 words could be from an email, compiled tweets, chatroom conversations, etc. [2]
  
• If the short sentences and robotic writing style do not appeal to you, try to observe and mimic another author. This is often successful [6]
  
• Do not make spelling mistakes or typos. Writeprinters will try to match those errors to your daily writing [2]
  
• Use perfect punctuation or do not use it at all (you can still use 'periods'... it's the 'commas' that'll kill ya). Again, writeprinters will try to match those errors to those of your daily writing [2]
  

You do not necessarily need to follow all of these methods. You can pick and choose those that you feel best work for you

Applying the previous techniques can make you stand out as trying to hide your writeprints. Feel free to use them as a guide for faking your writeprints instead of following them exactly to obscure your writeprints

Above all else, writeprinting relies on your consistency as a writer. Fortunately, you can change your style anytime without too much hassle.

For fun, visit
http://www.textalyser.net
to have stuff writeprinted.

Think of Bitcoin as digital cash. Until recently, it served as a means for high-risk currency trading, gambling and drug dealing. It was popular for these transactions because it was unregulated, easily used internationally and could be traded for government-issued currencies on exchanges, the most famous being the now defunct Mt. Gox.

Here is a tiny history of Bitcoin. It was introduced to the world in 2009 via the white paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” Just about nobody cared about Bitcoin until 2011 when the price of one Bitcoin went from $1 to $32 and back down to $2. After this first crash, financial nerds figured Bitcoin was just a cheap thrill that would soon fade away. After creeping up to $14 by the end of 2012, Bitcoin reached $1240 on December 4, 2013. Now, Bitcoin has scrutiny. Venture capitalists, FBI agents, and Academics are all over the technology, and, for various reasons, are dedicating resources to tracking and identifying users. The IRS and DEA showed that they are in the game by making the high profile arrests of Charlie Shrem, CEO of BitInstant and Robert Faiella, aka BTCKing, from the Silk Road on January 27th, 2014 (read a brief of the events at
https://howtobeanonymousonline.info/bitcoin/busted/
.

Before I go into why Bitcoin is not anonymous, I want to mention why Bitcoin is awesome:

• It makes online transactions easy without involving third parties.
  
• It avoids big payment processing fees.
  
• It gives the little guy a chance to have fun trading currencies with limited funds and minimal commissions.
  
• It has no central authority.
  [*]
  

While I am not going into all the details of Bitcoin’s inner workings, I am going to dispel the misconception that Bitcoin is anonymous. In fact, Bitcoin is the most public payment system in the world. Previously, it was considered “anonymous” because no entity cared enough to track transactions and identify users. Well, as I just mentioned, they care now.

Tracking Bitcoin is manageable for those with ample resources because every Bitcoin transaction is broadcast to the world through what is known as the Blockchain (visit
https://www.blockchain.info
to see). The Blockchain prevents a person from double spending a Bitcoin. Since every transaction is broadcast to the public, the “anonymity” comes from the fact that an individual's Bitcoin wallet address is publicly displayed instead of their actual identity. This is known as pseudonymity, not anonymity.

Here is a liberal scenario to help explain why this is a problem.

• We have one $5 Bill and three people using fake names, Xavier the Addict, Yasmin the Dealer and Zack the Maker.
  
• For $5, Xavier the Addict buys a crack rock from Yasmin the Dealer.
  
• Now, Yasmin the Dealer takes the $5 and goes to Zack the Maker to buy fresh crack rocks for future sales.
  
• Xavier, Yasmin, and Zack worked on the “down-low”, so nobody saw their activity. Since they did not raise anyone's suspension, nobody will try to backtrack the trail of the $5 Bill (that links Xavier to Yasmin to Zack), or investigate their real identities.
  

Let’s rework this scenario with a Bitcoin.

• We have one Bitcoin (฿1) and three people using fake names, Xavier the Addict, Yasmin the Dealer and Zack the Maker.
  
• For ฿1, Xavier the Addict buys a crack rock from Yasmin the Dealer.
  
• Now, Yasmin the Dealer takes the ฿1 and goes to Zack the Maker to buy fresh crack rocks for future sales.
  
• Even though Xavier, Yasmin, and Zack are fake names, since they used a Bitcoin, their fake names (i.e. wallet addresses) and the chain of transactions that link them together are broadcast to the world.
  

Using Bitcoins, Xavier, Yasmin and Zack thought they were on the “down-low” since all of their activity was done behind their computers using fake IP addresses and randomly generated "anonymous" Bitcoin wallet addresses. So wrong they are!

There are a number of ways to track Bitcoins along their transaction chain [7]. In fact, many stolen Bitcoins have never been used because there are no places to spend them without the risk of being identified. If they are traded on one of the major Bitcoin exchanges for government-issued currency, to be useful, the money must eventually be transferred to a bank. Subpoenaing an exchange would reveal where the money was transferred to or from. Subpoenaing the bank would identify who owned the account (Subpoenaing an exchange is one of the means the Feds used to identify BTCKing, from the Silk Road, as Robert M Faiella). If the Bitcoins were used to purchase physical goods, those physical goods would need to be physically delivered, exposing the receiver to the risk of identification or the goods to possible seizure. Selling a large quantity of Bitcoins in person is unrealistic since a well-informed person would not buy an enormous  volume of Bitcoins from a mysterious seller knowing we now live in a world where the FBI can and has seized illegally obtained Bitcoins (read about Ross William Ulbricht).

Thank God for Bitcoin "laundry" services! They will scrub those dirty, traceable Bitcoin's clean... Right? Maybe?? Hopefully???

Nope.

Using a Bitcoin laundry service assumes two things; First, they will wash your Bitcoins. Second, you can trust them for anything else.

Washing a Bitcoin is no simple task. The laundry service needs to mix your Bitcoin with LOTS of other Bitcoins. Then, those mixed Bitcoins must be divvied up and sent through LOTS of separate transactions where, again, they are mixed with new Bitcoins and re-divvied up at every step. That must happen to the point where it is statistically impossible to prove the link from a fraction of the Bitcoin at the beginning of the process to a fraction of the Bitcoin at the end of the process. That just is not going to happen. In fact, researchers tested out some Bit-Laundry services. The results? The Bitcoins were stolen, or the same Bitcoins were returned [7]. I am no genius, but, I would say if you took your dirty shirt to the cleaners and it came back dirty, you got f-cked. If you took your dirty shirt to the cleaners and they stole it, you got double f-cked
.

Using a Bit-laundry service also brings us back to the third party trust issue. This entity could be tracking or sharing data, susceptible to subpoenas or under siege by Kim Jong-Un. Seriously, when is the last time you went to the cleaners, and it was not run by Koreans? I certainly can't remember.

So what the heck!

As with everything else cyber-related, there are computer geeks working on a solution. Last year, the John Hopkins University Department of Computer Science began developing Zerocoin, an add-on to Bitcoin to anonymize Bitcoin transactions. This year, the Zero
coin
developers joined another group of developers and renamed the project Zero
cash
.

Zerocash will make use of two new crypto-currencies, a new ‘Zerocoin’ and a yet-to-be-named ‘basecoin.’ Zerocoins will be anonymous, and the basecoins will not.