this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Even if i use mullvad + tor i dont think that im fully anonym. Do you have any ideas to become fully anonym?

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[โ€“] Fondots@lemmy.world 11 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

For starters, I don't think I've ever seen someone say "anonym" in that sort of context before, so if that's something you say regularly, change that habit, either leave it at "anon" or fully write out "anonymous"

And I'm not saying that to be a dick, I'm illustrating a point, if you have a unique style of writing, that's something that can be used to fingerprint you. That's how the Unabomber got caught after all- someone noticed that in his manifesto that he said "you can't eat your cake and have it too" instead of the more common "you can't have your cake and eat it too" and said "hey, that sounds like Ted."

A while back there was a post on one of the food communities here where someone made a post about the "salmond" they cooked, and I immediately thought "is this the same guy who misspelled 'salmon' that same way like a week ago" and sure enough it was. Those stupid little things can stick out to people.

And if you carry those quirks around to different websites, it's possible for people to connect the dots if they really want to. Search around for different accounts across different websites that say "anonym" and they might be able to piece together a profile on you.

Hypothetically, let's say maybe somewhere on Lemmy you say that you're a fan of the Chicago Bulls, and on xitter under a different username you mention that you grew up in New Jersey, but both accounts have used the word "anonym" and they figure they might be the same person. Then on still another site with a different name where you've also said it, you mention that you were in marching band and went to Catholic school.

So now the profile is for bulls fans from New Jersey, who went to Catholic school and were in marching band. That is fairly specific. That might have narrowed down who you are to just a few hundred, or maybe even dozens of people.

So the most important lesson is to just be really aware of what information you're willingly putting out there about yourself and think about how it could potentially be used to identify you. It doesn't matter if you're on Tor and a VPN and all of the other technical measures you can take, because you're still just putting information about yourself out there.

Possibly the best thing you can do is to not to log ino post, comment like, subscribe, or otherwise interact with anything if it can be at all avoided.

For most people, most of the time, that's of course way overkill, I'm here writing this comment after all, and I'm sure there's plenty of information about myself on this account for some to build a pretty good profile about me if they really wanted to.

So really you need to consider why you want to be anonymous, and just how much you're willing to sacrifice your online experience to meet that goal.

[โ€“] Nickelalloy@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

You had me at the first half there mate, nice post and well explained!

No, I don't believe I can achieve absolute anonymity on the internet. But if you're in continental Europe connecting to the onion via a VPN you are turning the odds in your favor. It's probably not getting any better than that either.

[โ€“] scott@lem.free.as 2 points 4 hours ago

Privacy, yes.

Anonymity, no.