Mediaspace scheduled maintenance: Aug 25, 2026 07:00 - 12:00 AM. During this time, videos will be temporarily unavailable. Check status updates.

Lecture

Anonymity Online: Techniques and Weaknesses

In courses (2)

CS-438: Decentralized systems engineering

A decentralized system is one that works when no single party is in charge or fully trusted. This course teaches decentralized systems principles while guiding students through the engineering of their own decentralized system featuring messaging, file sha ...

CS-234: Technologies for democratic society

This course will offer students a broad but hands-on introduction to technologies of human self-organization. ...

Description

This lecture covers the importance of online anonymity for freedom of speech and escaping censorship, discussing techniques like bypassing geo-blocking and avoiding tracking. It also explores the weaknesses of weak anonymity via pseudonymous accounts and the challenges of maintaining anonymity in online activities.

Instructors (3)

Pierluca Borsò

Bryan Alexander Ford

Verónica del Carmen Estrada Galiñanes

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Tor (network)

Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic via a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network that consists of more than seven thousand relays. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace a user's Internet activity. Tor protects personal privacy by concealing a user's location and usage from anyone performing network surveillance or traffic analysis. It protects the user's freedom and ability to communicate confidentially through IP address anonymity using Tor exit nodes.

Anonymity

Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea here is that a person be non-identifiable, unreachable, or untrackable. Anonymity is seen as a technique, or a way of realizing, a certain other values, such as privacy, or liberty.

Onion routing

Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to the layers of an onion. The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of network nodes called "onion routers," each of which "peels" away a single layer, revealing the data's next destination. When the final layer is decrypted, the message arrives at its destination. The sender remains anonymous because each intermediary knows only the location of the immediately preceding and following nodes.

Internet censorship circumvention

Internet censorship circumvention, also referred to as going over the wall () or scientific browsing () in China, is the use of various methods and tools to bypass internet censorship. Various techniques and methods are used to bypass Internet censorship, and have differing ease of use, speed, security, and risks. Some methods, such as the use of alternate DNS servers, evade blocking by using an alternate address or address lookup system to access the site.

User interface

In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, while the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls and process controls.

Related lectures (54)

Anonymous Communication: Motivations and Approaches

Explores motivations for anonymous communication and various approaches to achieve anonymity.

Privacy Technologies: Some Privacy Technologies (part II)

Explores anonymous communication systems, attribute-based credentials, the Tor network, and other privacy technologies.

Privacy: definition

Explores the definitions, value, and challenges of privacy, including personal data and privacy properties like pseudonymity and k-anonymity.

Privacy Evaluation: Systematic Approach

Explores a systematic approach to privacy evaluation, emphasizing concepts like confidentiality, anonymity, and plausible deniability.

Privacy Technologies