- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10899106
AI Can Now Easily Unmask Your Secret Online Life for $4
A new research paper from ETH Zurich, Anthropic, and MATS demonstrates that Large Language Models can automatically de-anonymize users across platforms like Reddit and Hacker News.
The AI acts like a digital detective using a method called ESRC (Extract, Search, Reason, Calibrate). It scans a user’s post history for subtle clues (hobbies, writing style, locations), searches the wider internet (LinkedIn, other forums) for matches, and uses complex reasoning to confirm the identity.
The terrifying results:
- It correctly linked secret Hacker News usernames to real people 67% of the time (with 90% accuracy when it made a firm guess).
- It successfully matched a person’s separate Reddit accounts from different years 68% of the time.
- The entire automated process costs only $4 per target.
“Practical obscurity”-the idea that you’re safe online because it takes too much human effort to connect your digital breadcrumbs-is dead. Anyone with a few dollars and an LLM API can now mass-dox thousands of pseudonymous accounts in minutes.
Once again, the early Internet opsec of “Assume that everyone on the internet wants to track you down, and don’t ever post your name, specific age, employer, or city in a publicly accessible online place” gives you an ample amount of protection.
Okay if you say so
Name: Kurox Ppi
Specific age: 23 years, 7 months and 9 days
Employer: Mars Inc
City: New York, USA
Specifically, I work in the product design team which was responsible for putting the dick vein on the Snickers, a popular peanut and chocolate bar
This information is all true and current to the best of my knowledge. Please do not use it to triangulate my identity based on other online and offline activity.
Edit: peanut, caramel and chocolate bar
Edit edit: peanut, caramel, nougat and chocolate bar
Mmm I love the Snickers dick vein.
We did extensive customer research and found out that the dick vein is where the flavor is
My real name is Donald John Hoxha, age 80 years old, not counting the dead ones. My employer is Deng Daping, leader of the Shanghai liberals, but I’m actually a remote volunteer all the way from Dongjing province.
That would be a little less creepy if my middle name wasn’t John too.
My full name is actually
Lady Caj Asca, so I’m using my middle name as my nickname because being called Lady is… well, actually who cares? You know what, call me anything, as long as I know it’s connected to this account on a leftist forum. My parents at birth named me Lady and Caj Asca is actually from a long line of Caj Ascas in Manila of the Filipinos with the sole purpose of shitposting since the arrival of humans in the islands.
My age is permanently 21 years, 6 months and 9 days because I’m stuck in an unknown purgatory of sorts where I only know the current date and time through the computer, and I don’t seem to age, starve or get thirsty, though I find random bottles of suspicious pink liquid on the ground and drink them, I don’t know what it does, but it does taste sweet…
My employer? Oh of course the great CPC, and MSS, they transfer me Xi bucks to my bank account that I exchange for internet connection, as somehow that’s still not free.
I hope this isn’t used to track wherever I am, I’m perfectly content here in this room that only has a PC to post in the internet… Though, sometimes I do hope I find a way out… because the internet’s still bad here still and I find myself with nothing to do in these gray floors… And I’ve got nothing to do whenever Hexbear goes down…