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.
Among other good advice in this thread: lie and be inconsistent about personal interests and anything else identifiable.
My hobbies include stealing from hobby stores and setting canisters of LPG on fire
Okg me too
If you know how many children I have, and what their ages are, it’s about 50-50 I’ve met you in person. If you know all of their gender identities, it’s more like 90-10. The rest is made up.
I will stay a nebulous person of dubious identity and any one else saying anything else are lying. I’m from everywhere all at once.