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An Offline Foundation for Online Accountable Pseudonyms
Bryan Ford and Jacob Strauss
Abstract
Online anonymity
often appears to undermine accountability,
offering little incentive for civil behavior,
but accountability failures usually
result not from anonymity itself
but from the disposability of virtual identities.
A user banned for misbehavior---
e.g., spamming from a free E-mail account
or stuffing an online ballot box---
can simply open other accounts or connect from other IP addresses.
Instead of curtailing freedom of expression
by giving up anonymity,
online services and communities should support accountable pseudonyms:
virtual personas that can provide both anonymity and accountability.
We propose Pseudonym parties,
a scheme for creating accountable pseudonyms,
which combine in-person social occasions (parties)
with technical infrastructure (a pseudonymous sign-on service)
to enforce the rule
that one real person gets one virtual persona
on any participating online service.
Pseudonym parties
enable the user to adopt different personas in different online spaces
without revealing the connection between them,
while ensuring that each user has only one accountable pseudonym
in each space.
Pseudonym parties can be started incrementally
in a fully decentralized fashion,
can run on volunteer labor with minimal funds,
and may even be fun.
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