From Wall Street Journal Digits Blog
Whisper and the Meaning of Anonymity
By Elizabeth Dwoskin
Once upon a time, few people cared about online anonymity beyond privacy activists and hardcore security types.
Now it’s anyone who uses an app that promises to keep their secrets. Programs like Whisper, Snapchat, Secret, and Yik Yak let users post messages that purportedly contain no identifying information. These apps encourage people vent things they wouldn’t otherwise say in public, confident that their private expressions can’t be traced to them....
Companies that connect to users through the Internet inevitably know identifying details about their customers, according to Deirdre Mulligan, associate professor and privacy expert at University of California Berkeley School of Information. However, “they can do things to make it harder for [those details] to be a sole source of identification,” she said. These things include separating transaction and identity data, truncating numbers such as device IDs and IP addresses that serve as unique identifiers, and blurring location data, as Whisper claims to do.
Even companies that take these precautions still can’t keep users anonymous if a law enforcement agency requests the data. “Limiting disclosures to law enforcement are nigh impossible if they go to court,” Mulligan said. Heyward himself has been open about the fact that if a Whisper user uses the app to say illegal or harmful things, the company will turn that information over to authorities....
In any case, promising anonymity invites regulatory scrutiny. “These companies have stuck their necks up above the pack, making a market play as privacy-preserving apps without investing the technical resources to back up their promises,” Mulligan said, referring to both Snapchat and Whisper....