Skip to main content

Ithaca Freedom of Technology

Anonymity vs. Privacy

Last updated:

Douglas Crawford at Proton wrote this great summary of the differences between anonymity and privacy. He notes that they are not synonyms and contrasts them:

Anonymity – Keeping your identity private, but not your actions. For example, using a pseudonym to post messages to a social media platform. Privacy – Keeping some things to yourself, which can include your actions. For example, messaging friends privately so they know who sent the message, but only they can read it.

So you can be anonymous but not private, and vice versa. You can also be both, or neither.

Put another way:

As Crawford also notes, these are different from “security”, though they are often used interchangeably.

Security – The precautions used to keep you safe. What exactly “safe” means can very much depend on your threat model.

It may be helpful to read “security” in the sense of assurances – they are actionable practices that you can take to ensure you have the outcome you want, in the presence of a “threat model.” The amount of assurances you need depends entirely on your “threat model.”

Iron Triangle of Security

Choose any two:

For example, storing the computed values for 8,000 bitcoin on a hard drive and then losing that hard drive in a landfill is both a cheap and effective way of securing that the bitcoin are inaccessible… but as the owner found, it’s terribly inconvenient.

More practically, “cheap and effective, but inconvenient” could be using Multi-factor authentication where you provide a one-time-pad code or get an SMS message when attempting to log in to a service.

Similarly, you could use the same password for every site and have that password be something easy to remember (cheap and convenient), but this isn’t very effective at securing your privacy.

Lastly, something that isn’t cheap but would be effective and more or less convenient might be using unique and complex password each time, storing that password in a password manager service, or using a Yubikey. These aren’t expensive but they do add some cost.

Why do these matter?

The Pew Research Center has found that, in America at least:

Most Americans see privacy issues in commercial settings as contingent and context-dependent {…and…} would share personal information or permit surveillance in return for getting something of perceived value.

The “context-dependent” part here is key, and gets back to the “threat model” mentioned above. The key factors found by respondents include (paraphrased):

Having a deeper understanding of the differences between “anonymity”, “privacy”, how to secure them both, and what you’re securing them against are all key aspects of digital hygiene.

Sources & Further Reading

    •