Anonymous Blogging is an electronic form of annonymous blogging.

Anonymous blogging in contrast to the conventional blogging practise is all about expressing thoughts and opinions without revealing one’s identity. Unlike fake blog, anonymous blogs are written by real people on a stated stand point basis, and hence most are seen as a credible source, even though they may be biased. The purpose of the anonymous blog is to give an alternate or insiders view on a view point, situation, location or organisation, without giving away the identity of the writer.

Anonymous blogs are particualrly popular with women, who make up 55% of all individual bloggers.^[1] Thanks to their insider authenticity and transparency, which are important in social networking and blogging, unlike fake blogs, anonymous blogs are not illegal in most countries.^[2] But the blog contents are still subject to at least the bloggers own resdient country laws, if not other jurisdictions, and most blogs about medical subjects will break the Hippocratic oath.^[3]

Anonymous bloggers begin by setting up fake email addresses for their blog and registering it with a made-up name (pseudonym), just one way to hide the bloggers true identity. But since the reasons of anonymous blogging touched the notion of controversies, anonymous blogging has been facing a lot of technical challenges. Tracing identities is possible through a number of ways and anonymous bloggers are continuously finding new ways to protect the identities. Presently it is not only about choosing a pen name to start a blog, anonymous bloggers have to use a lot of ways to prevent their identities to be traced, what ever they may choose to write about.

Background

Blogging started off as a platform that allowed people to share ideas and opinions with the world. As a result bloggers also got to be famous as the traffic and visibility of their blogs increases with time. This traffic phenomenon lead in 2004 to the creation of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory:^[4]

As the concept of blogging grew with time so did the reasons and disciplines of blogging. After threats were made to blogger Kathy Sierra, Tim O'Reilly called for the creation of the Blogger's Code of Conduct.^[5] The idea of the code was first reported by BBC News, who quoted O'Reilly saying, "I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of regulation it would come through self-regulation."^[6] In 2005, O'Reilly, Robert Scoble^[7] and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

With the rise of Web 2.0, readers have a new fixation: authenticity. More readers want to know that all bloggers are who you the blogger says they are, and for a lot of bloggers that includes using your real name.^[13] However, many authentic bloggers still do not want people to know who they are and what they are doing, either because they are too shy or they want to pursue safe ways of blogging. One of the more popular reasons why bloggers choose to be anonymous is because the topic they want to discuss and share their opinions on is of a controversial nature and they want their identities to be hidden. Being part of the blogosphere throws a lot of questions at anonymous bloggers regarding their purpose of blogging but the truth is that the purpose of blogging is now evolving and anonymous blogging is one of the ways to have control over identity protection.

Benefits of Anonymous Blogging

The concept of anonymous blogging is an attraction for a lot of people. People choose to blog for a number of reasons in which lies the benefits of anonymous blogging. The idea to go anonymous can be supported by a number of reasons. It is simply a safe way of communicating with the blog community without fearing what others might think and say. Whatever the topic of the blog, bloggers benefit greatly from hiding their identities like:^[13]

• Writing about whatever they want because they know nobody knows them and will not question them directly about what they wrote.
• Write for yourself: anonymous blogging makes it clear that you’re only writing for yourself. Nobody, but particalarly your family, friends, place of work or clubs won't worry about people thinking you’re a “representative”
• No preconceptions: because you happen to be you, with a personal profile and a professional life, no one comes at your blog with "brand you" written above it. Its just a blog!
• No pressure: no worrying about being questioned, disagreed with or made fun of
• No censorship: write what you want, when you want
• Sharing secrets and controversies: being able to share real life personal or commercially sensitive subjects, or something which you may be shy about
• Deeper, wider opinions: getting a deeper and wider breadth of opinion, particualrly about problems that the blogger may be facing in real life
• Limited judgements, no stalkers: yes, people will read and be opinionated about your blog, and may well make such comments. But your blogging self takes the hits, not the real life you - particularly in the case of Cyberstalking
• Make money: most blogs don't make money, but a good authentic anonyomous blog that occasionally steps outside the line can easily make money when writing a review about products or affiliate marketing
• Privacy and safety: allows for complete separation between blogging and an individuals personal/professional life.^[13]
• Different perspectives: you can address the same subject area by maintaining a number of different unrelated blogs, showing different sides of the debate or your personality
• Try something or a fresh blogging start: try something new or get a fresh start to blogging in the same subject area, to know whether it will fail or succeed while protecting your true identity

Anonymous blogging has been an enchanting and inviting concept for many people who want to adopt blogging as part of their life. The only problem that bloggers are now facing with this concept is being able to protect their identities and getting through the web technicalities that allow a lot of ways to track users.

Forms of anonymous blogging

There are three forms of basic anonymous blogger:^[13]

• Full anonymity: using an obvious John Doe style fake name, the blog and identity page include no personal details (ie: no photographs, birth date, location, hobbies, family, etc), absolutely nothing to allow the reader to identify the blogger whatsoever
• Semi-anonymity: this type of anonymous blogger adopts a pseudonym title, sharing some identifying details to establish credibility, but not enough to identify them. Hence the blogger openly shares the details which establish themselves as authentic and real, but none of their personal details. This is the form used by many anonyous sex industry bloggers, where they are open about their career, but not about their whole life or hence identity, ie: British blogger Belle de Jour, or self-confessed lingerie addict Treacle.^[14]
• Secret identity: effectively in this form you are you, but you adopt an alternate identity, which often exists across numerous social media platforms as an extension to the original blogging identity. This fully-formed identity is the most easy for readers to engage with, thinking that they are engaging with the real human being behind the blog. However, much like a fake blog, if ever your real identity is revealed, readers can feel massively betrayed. For this system to work, you also have to adopt the identity from the very start of your blog.

Although anonymous blogging has taken a lot of criticism from professional journalists, the later two forms of anonimity have been used regularly since the origins of the press by various columnists.^[15]

Types of anonymous blogs

Much as a blog can be on any subject, any anonymous blog can be on any subject. But most fall into the following major categories:

• Political: a commentary on the political situation within a country, where being open may risk prosecution.^[16] Anonymous blogging can also add power to a political debate, such as in 2008 when blogger Eduwonkette, later revealled as Columbia University sociology graduate student Jennifer Jennings, for a period successfully question New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's revolution in New York schools.^[17]
• Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary: these can be both inpsiring activity, or counter activity, often against a violent state apparatus. In example, Salam Pax the Baghdad blogger wrote for The Guardian newspaper under a pseudonym that he could shed only when Saddam Hussein no longer ruled in Iraq. Similar bloggers appeared during the Arab Spring.^[18]
• Company insider: a company employee or insider, who reports on company operations and issues from within the organisation. The most famous is probably the Dooce.com blogger Heather Armstrong,^[19] who was fired for writing satirical accounts of her experiences at a dot-com startup on her personal blog, dooce.com.^[20] As a result "Dooced" can now mean "getting fired for something you've written on your website," a sense supported by the Urban Dictionary,^[21] and humorously disavowed by Armstrong in her blog's FAQ.^[22]
• Personal: the personal blog strays into your personal life in ways in which you can be more risk taking and open in the detail. Many of these blogs hence are sexual in nature, but many also exist for those with health problems and disabilities, and how they see the world and cope with it challenges. Some of the latest personal blogs are seen by many as extended group therapy, covering issues including weight loss.^[23]

Recently, anonymous blogging has moved into a more aggresive active style, with crime gangs such as the Mafia using anonymous blogs against mayors and local administrators in Italy.^[24]

How Your Online Identity is Tracked

According to many blog experts bloggers cannot have full anonymity because the world of internet can allow knowing someone better than they know themselves in many ways. While surfing through the web a lot of personal information is left on the virtual space that can be accessed without permission and even available for the public to search. Browsers, search engines and social networking sites (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace) are the prime sources through which the personal information can be retrieved. However there are tools that pose threat to anonymous blogger’s identity that are used for tracking. This includes the following methods.

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity.^[25] Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user even months or years ago. Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer;^[26] tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are commonly used as way to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories. In itself a major privacy concern that has prompted European and US law makers to take action,^[27][28] cookies can be revealed to find out a blogger’s identity if not disabled.

IP Addresses

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.^[29] An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification; and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there."^[30] IP addresses are binary numbers, but they are usually stored in text files and displayed in human-readable notations, such as 172.16.254.1 (for IPv4), and 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 (for IPv6). Due to the enormous growth of the Internet and the predicted depletion of available addresses, a new addressing system (IPv6), using 128 bits for the address, was developed in 1995,^[31] standardized as RFC 2460 in 1998,^[32] and its deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) manages the IP address space allocations globally and delegates five regional Internet registries (RIRs) to allocate IP address blocks to local Internet registries (Internet service providers) and other entities. They hence fully revealing location of the device, making IP addresses are one of the most popular ways to track and reveal identities as well as physical location.

Anonymous bloggers need to take help from a lot of tools to hide their IP addresses from being tracked easily. Typical of the attitude of internet companies, Google will only reveal an IP address identity on being served a valid court order, as they did in 2007 when the anonymous Skanks in NYC blog attacked Liskula Cohen, a 37-year-old who had modeled for Australian Vogue, Georgio Armani and Versace.^[33] In August 2009, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled that Cohen was entitled to know the name of the blogger who had authored the blog, ordering Google to release the blogger's name.^[34] Cohen then filed a defamation lawsuit against the blogger, revealed as 29-year-old New York Fashion Institute of Technology student Rosemary Port, for $3 million.^[35] Port subsequently announced plans to sue Google for $15 million for breach of a fiduciary duty to protect her privacy, but has never filed any papers.^[36]

In China, while legislation and court orders do not directly exist, from 2007 a number of Chinese blog service providers signed the so-called "self-discipline" pact. The pact does not force, but rather "encourages" Internet companies to register and store the real names, addresses and other details of their users.^[37]

Google Analytics & Reverse ID Lookup

Google Analytics (GA) is used by many bloggers to keep track of the stats of their blogs. But GA is now threatening most bloggers through its Reverse ID Lookup tool which allow tracking what other sites or blogs the blogger maintains. Normally bloggers use the same Google ID to track their page views for every blog or site they maintain. With GA it is only a matter of minutes when a lot of information about the anonymous blogger can be retrieved.

In November 2011, technologist Andy Baio used GA to trackdown an anonymous flamethrower to his self-identified blog in under a minute.^[38] Shocked about how easy the task has been, Baio tried the same tactics with 50 random anonymous blogs, finding that 14 use Google Analytics, and 7 share the same ID: "In about 30 minutes of searching, using only Google and eWhois, I was able to discover the identities of seven of the anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers, and in two cases, their employers."^[39] Reverse lookups are now being offered by many free analytics services, which can unmask a lot of blog’s IP addresses and domain registrations.

Technical Challenges Faced by Anonymous Bloggers

Mostly identities are revealed because bloggers are not very technically upfront. Anonymous blogging is not restricted to just having unreal names and emails anymore. There are a lot of aspects to consider in order to protect identities from being leaked through any source. For anonymous bloggers to remain totally and genuinely anonymous they must be totally invisible which is impossible. The biggest challenge that anonymous bloggers face is how to create delays in tracking them.

Bloggers have to ensure that there is no direct link to their real identity and the blog they maintain via the sources or tools that they are using to connect to the World Wide Web. This is specially important for the new bloggers who are not familiar with the breaking-in mechanisms of the virtual world. As the technology is evolving the browsers and connections used by users allow a lot of ways to protect privacy. But along with this evolution there are lot of consequences that hinder the conventional use of the web.

Logging in from different IP addresses whenever it is time to post something on the blog is one way of making bloggers invisible. The concept of Onion Routing has gained much publicity being used by Wikileaks to publish government secrets. While this may seem a fruitful idea it also slows down the routing process and at times restricts user from viewing certain web pages. Mainly all the techniques used to protect identities relate to hiding the IP address tracking. The browsers being used are equipped with major security holes that can comprise the online identity security of the bloggers.

Techniques to stay anonymous

Where there may not be a 100% guarantee on the idea of never being discovered, there are number of ways to pursue anonymity. A few steps provide piece of mind from uninvited interference for anonymous bloggers and protecting their identities:^[40]

Pre-thoughts/Caveats

1. The only way to remain anonymous is not to blog at all
2. Accept that once you start blogging, its only a matter of time before you are discovered our outed. The more precautions that you take, the longer your time will be as an anonymous blogger
3. It is easier to start anonymous and come out or be revealed, yet almost impossible to start open and go anonymous. If you want to be anonymous, then start a fresh as anonymous

Set-Up

1. It is important to set up a separate account for every blog maintained
2. Using a separate email address to register the blog is important. It is also considered a good option to use temporary email addresses for posting to the blog. These emails expire after 24 hours
3. Anonymous blogging platforms are the most viable options to consider for staying anonymous online
4. Using a different host for the anonymous blog so that the IP assigned is totally separate from the one being used for real identity
5. Set up separate social media accounts, such as on Twitter, Facebook, and Paypal
6. Consider a P.O. Box if you’ll need to send or receive letter correspondence or goods

Your blog

1. Think about your blogs identity. Once set-up, it is difficult to change without dumping the whole blog and ceasing all activity on it and associated with it
2. What boundaries do you have, and what are the boundaries for your blog? For instance, what are you okay with sharing, and what is absolutely off limits? In 2002, Dooce.com blogger Heather Armstrong was allegedly fired from her job as a web designer and graphic artist because she had written satirical accounts of her experiences at a dot-com startup on her personal blog, dooce.com.^[41]
3. Never mention others by name on your blog who could identify you. It is best practise to not mention details of friends or family on your blog.
4. Many anonymous bloggers hence apply the same rules to people mentioned on their blog as to themselves. Although often not referred to even by pseudonyms, most use nouns or generic tags, ie: "Husband" or "He who created them"
5. Take your guide as: If in doubt, always be genuine.

Operation

1. Some anonymous bloggers refuse to use home or work computers, only using communal places such as libraries and cyber cafes
2. Make sure that privacy settings are applied on the browser, and also through the internet service provider to protect the IP address from being tracked
3. Using the incognito mode on the browser can help maintain firewalls and proxy servers and also deletes the browsing history by disabling cookies
4. For tools like Google Analytics it is better to have a separate account to track different domains being maintained.^[38]
5. Domain privacy must be ensured as identities can be revealed through domain payments being made online. It is a better idea to use either a free hosting service or pre-paid hosting service in which online payments can be avoided.^[38]
6. Installing Onion routing software for not being able to track easily is essential as it helps in routing web requests through different network tunnels
7. Avoid used embedded social networking controls in the blog sites like Facebook or Twitter, or the RSS feed.^[38]

Risk to employment?=

1. Does your company have a set of blogging rules? IBM discourages anonymous blogging or covert marketing, while Sun computer urges employees to expose their personalities but warns that "a blog is a public place and you should avoid embarrassing your readers or the company."^[42]
2. Popularity and awards will turn a far greater press and authority spotlight on your blog, and increase the number of investigators looking for your identity. The popular "Night Jack" blog in the UK with regards policing was shutdown in 2008 after a High Court ruling stated that serving Lancashire Police constable Richard Horton had no right to anonimity. He was subsequently disciplined, and left the force.^[43]

Life or death?

1. Is your anonymity a life-or-death situation? Any internet service that you use could be forced to reveal your details under a court order. But your degree of anonymity can be increased, so to mask your IP address when blogging: use shared computers; an anonymous proxy; or Tor; or ideally a mixture of all three. Andy Baio recommends this Guide to Anonymous Blogging with WordPress & Tor from Global Voices Advocacy.^[38]
2. Watch your history. Resources including Whois track the history of domain and nameserver changes permanently, while Archive.org may contain old versions of your blog. Often social media is a giveaway, so don't be the first person to follow your anonymous Twitter account or promote the link.^[38]

An Anonymous blogging platforms

As anonymous blogging is on an upsurge various platforms are being introduced that offer protection of identities for the bloggers. Anonyme.com is one such anonymous blogging platform that is catering to this particular need of bloggers. The platform provides guarantee in the privacy and safety of bloggers and their blog post through a safe environment of blogging.

The technique used by Anonyme is encryption to block the tracking of IP addresses. The servers are encrypted which makes it impossible for the outside interferers to intrude into the privacy of bloggers. Bloggers can create accounts at Anonyme without sharing any of their personal information or even email addresses. This is one way of staying purely anonymous and puts the blogger in charge of what to reveal and what to hide. This does not restrict the readers of the blog to post comments on the blog posts. The two way communication between the anonymous blogger and the reader is constant and bloggers can even use their mobile devices to send posts without their IPs getting tracked.

As new ways of staying anonymous are being introduced such anonymous blogging platforms offer a convenient way to communicate specially for new bloggers. Those who are not technology savvy can leverage significantly through platforms like Anonyme.com because there are no technical details involved. Users simply create their anonymous account and start blogging. The platform provides identity security on its own without letting the user worry about how to apply different measures of protection. Anonyme is a considerable option for anonymous bloggers wanting to blog for their own reasons.