Online anonymity is over for now

"We show that large language models can be used to perform at-scale deanonymization. With full Internet access, our agent can re-identify Hacker News users and Anthropic Interviewer participants at high precision, given pseudonymous online profiles and conversations alone, matching what would take hours for a dedicated human investigator. We then design attacks for the closed-world setting.

Our results show that the practical obscurity protecting pseudonymous users online no longer holds and that threat models for online privacy need to be reconsidered."

  • Funwayguy@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I think anyone who’s paid any attention to targeted advertising has know this long before LMMs were a thing. Removing the ‘easy answer’ is just a legal formality at this point and does little to nothing for the privacy it claims to protect. Advertisers like Google like it that way and will fight tooth and nail against any ‘reconsiderations’