Quote from: Guru on July 24, 2012, 05:23 pmQuote from: pine on July 24, 2012, 01:02 amQuoteThe literal definition of anonymity is a state of namelessness. A more technical definition of anonymity is the state of being indistinguishable from a given set size. Pine, I would argue that you are perhaps more pseudonymous than anonymous. If you were truly anonymous, you wouldn't use a consistent name or handle like "Pine". I too, take my security very seriously -- that said, I do not consider it a serious security lapse for people to know that I am married, nor what country I live in -- Canada -- assuming that I'm not lying about either. I would argue that the entire Canadian population is a reasonable-sized anonymity set, wouldn't you? GuruTechnically yes, but the idea I'm trying to get across is that the larger the set of possible 'pines' the better for my anonymity. I see it as a 'garden of information'. There are hedges to prune and such, it is not really a chore for me. For example; even if I used a new handle per post, it would still be understood from my communications that I must be able to write and speak English, and therefore I automatically belong to a smaller set of the people who use the Tor network than the universal set.But, I believe giving away any information that is geographically specific or a social identifier is a bad idea in general. This is because in an intersection attack, those kinds of facts can be complied into a list of things which by themselves do not identify me, but all together they may do a fairly good job of it. i.e. intelligence rather than a direct giveaway. In fact, all of detective work is fundamentally based on the fundamental principal of counting when you get right down to it. The way to trip it up is to lay countless artful red herrings, which is why almost everybody here is doing just that in some form or other, intentionally or no. Some go further and adopt entire identities from publicly available information on sites like facebook to put down a false trail, and there's a kaleidoscope of clever technical tricks to give similar impressions of which I've no doubt you're aware. And of course, I may be utilizing styleometric software to disguise the unique fingerprint of my posts with a false one.Naturally, there is a certain limit to this work/logic. Like I said, I write English, and not everybody using Tor does. The advantages of communicating far surpass the disadvantages of giving away certain identifiers like the language you speak. It is important to build reputation in any business community to be respected. But in general, I choose to adopt more generic language, or use words which represent a larger set than the one I intend to be understood with. On a related topic, I sometimes don't use generic language for the same reason, contradictory as that may sound, but often this is a ploy because I'm self taught in so many disciplines that the species of my language is quite honestly a poor guide to who I appear to be in public life.As for what point such activity becomes useless, it is not known, because one can make mistakes. That is why the caution over a detail such as my sex. Why reduce the universal set by a whopping 50% when I wouldn't get such a magnificent return on any other kind of information being made generic. So there you have it.To answer your question more directly, I think being hidden in a set of 10 million possible identities is sufficient room for maneuver, but the more the merrier of course. I think I'm one in a million naturally, but not quite so egotistical to imagine I'm 1 in 10 million ;-)Protip: Don't use the same or similar a password as that which you use on SR or the forums, also on any common web based service like Facebook, Gmail, Hotmail et al. That would catch out many people, what do you think are the odds that certain organizations receive a copy of the password list before they get stored in an encrypted database. Probably it is defacto state policy in many places once a corporation reaches a certain significance to install 'audit' software for 'Data Protection' or 'Consumer Protection' or what have you. I mean, that's what I would do. So I don't.P.S. I'm afraid that it is useless to edit information from these forums FGM, because LEO almost certainly page scrap every single instance of change that occurs on here. Once the information is out, it is permanently out there, that is why you follow the 'Pine Paradigm' you read above.Paranoid (but content) Pine