> Our approach is based on a simple observation:
each person has a distinctive social network, and thus the
set of links appearing in one’s feed is unique.
Compartmentalization mitigates that threat. I have multiple online personas, and Mirimir is the only one who goes on about privacy, anonymity, etc. The only one who visits HN, Wilders, etc. Mirimir and other online personas also share no contacts. However, Mirimir does use pseudonyms ;)
Couldn't you also be identified to a certain probability based on your writing style (stylometry)? I remember reading something about that years ago.
Makes me think someone should make a Chrome extension that will re-write everything someone posts based on the concepts they are trying to get across. To avoid being identified via stylometry.
I find that stylometry is one of the easier barriers to overcome. For example, one pseudonym can persistently make a grammatical error ( e.g. failing to capitalise proper nouns ) and another can use UK English spellings.
And then there's the general 'vibe' of the forum which shapes how a pseduonym writes. If I were to write the same thing on HN versus IRC I would hope that the styles would be very different.
What's really difficult is comparmentalising information, so that even on the same website two pseudonyms don't demonstrate that they have the same knowledge.
Is it worth the bother? Possibly not, but I find it also makes me concentrate on what I'm writing.
I hope "erehwon" is just one of those pseudonyms and doesn't connect to any other of your identities :).
That said, deanonymization methods stack up; add geotemporal correlation of activities and one could presumably connect your various identities together ;).
Is there really much value in keeping the same HN account? Perhaps account rotation would be a much better method of obscuring your identity. Some social networks do have value for maintaining the same friends, while others do not.
Compartmentalization mitigates that threat. I have multiple online personas, and Mirimir is the only one who goes on about privacy, anonymity, etc. The only one who visits HN, Wilders, etc. Mirimir and other online personas also share no contacts. However, Mirimir does use pseudonyms ;)