61

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] kristina@hexbear.net 33 points 6 days ago

i live on liberal mountain and i am an ardent lover of neoliberalism, hillary clinton, bill clinton, and obama

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago

Omg me too!

[-] Tabitha@hexbear.net 31 points 6 days ago

This is why I make a new account for every comment I post.

[-] SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net 28 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Those 200 accounts that keep getting created on a daily basis starts to look a little suspicious. I think we got her. fedposting

[-] TheSpectreOfGay@hexbear.net 31 points 6 days ago

there's no shot this doesn't give a fuck ton of false positives. especially for anyone who just occasionally sneaks a lie into their posts

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 33 points 6 days ago

This is why your "secret online name" should be a meme that literally millions of people use and absolutely not something unique that can be identified across multiple services.

[-] trabpukcip@hexbear.net 26 points 6 days ago

Feel like the "writing style" one is pretty hard to nail down when every redditor anne frankly did nazi that coming

[-] TheVelvetGentleman@hexbear.net 5 points 5 days ago
[-] Tabitha@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago

le bacon barhops bat bidnight

[-] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 28 points 6 days ago

Once again, the early Internet opsec of "Assume that everyone on the internet wants to track you down, and don't ever post your name, specific age, employer, or city in a publicly accessible online place" gives you an ample amount of protection.

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

post your name, specific age, employer, or city in a publicly accessible online place

Okay if you say so

Name: Kurox Ppi
Specific age: 23 years, 7 months and 9 days
Employer: Mars Inc
City: New York, USA

Specifically, I work in the product design team which was responsible for putting the dick vein on the Snickers, a popular peanut and chocolate bar

This information is all true and current to the best of my knowledge. Please do not use it to triangulate my identity based on other online and offline activity.

Edit: peanut, caramel and chocolate bar

Edit edit: peanut, caramel, nougat and chocolate bar

[-] oliveoil@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago

Mmm I love the Snickers dick vein.

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago

We did extensive customer research and found out that the dick vein is where the flavor is

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] MarxMadness@hexbear.net 27 points 6 days ago

Among other good advice in this thread: lie and be inconsistent about personal interests and anything else identifiable.

[-] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 18 points 6 days ago

My hobbies include stealing from hobby stores and setting canisters of LPG on fire

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago
[-] Thordros@hexbear.net 8 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] LadyCajAsca@hexbear.net 4 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] oliveoil@hexbear.net 25 points 6 days ago

Woah so they can know that I live in Berlin, Germany because I wrote equations like this:

$50 / $1.500 = 3,33%

Crazy. They infer based on my cues like a champ. Heckin awesome bro.

Genial !

[-] Chana@hexbear.net 15 points 6 days ago

Just like how I personally, myself, Chana, count on my hands starting with my thumb. As all Deutsche would.

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago

I can't count using fingers on my hands because I don't have fingers, or hands. My hands got blown off by an IED serving in my first tour of Iraq.

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago

I toured in Afghanistan and the same thing happened to me, except I was left with one finger that I now use for peck typing. I guess I should count my blessings, which luckily is 1.

[-] oliveoil@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago

Damn, my hands got blown off in my third tour of Iraq. I am posting with my mouth rn.

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

I got blown off with a mouth during my fourth tour.

[-] Chana@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

As a staunch conservative I thank you for your service.

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago

Thank you for thanking me for my service rat-salute-2

[-] oliveoil@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago

Yes of course, I hold up my thumb, my index finger, and my middle finger to say "3".

[-] Chana@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago

Drei is such a good number, same as the number of world wars we won't start!

[-] BeanisBrain@hexbear.net 25 points 6 days ago

This is going to empower all the worst Kiwifarms types.

[-] refolde@hexbear.net 24 points 6 days ago

I would make a joke that it's going to put them out of business, AI's come to take their jobs too.

[-] Chana@hexbear.net 18 points 6 days ago

This could already be done with basic language models and standard statistics.

[-] Thordros@hexbear.net 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

This is gonna be really unfortunate for the federal agent that unmasks my real identity, and unearths hundreds of pics of me going hog out all over the place in sex clubs 30 years ago.

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 18 points 6 days ago

It's a good thing I've invested heavily in canned food and shotguns

[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 16 points 6 days ago

Remember: you are ALWAYS trolling online.

All my old reddit accounts? I was just trolling. Everything I said on Twitter? Trolling.

[-] Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I am so glad I don't use my real identity ANYWHERE on the internet; I got that boomer brainworms that thinks saying key words by accident near my phone will get me arrested

[-] PointyFluff@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 days ago

This isn't even a little bit new. Companies have been identifying users via their "hand" for a couple of decades now.

[-] CrookedSerpent@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago

This is an elaborate bit account, everything I say and have said has been in jest

[-] Rey_McSriff@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

I, on the other hand, always tell the truth about being a semi professional conservative baseball player (let's go Iron Pigs!)

This is pretty much the only place I post anymore, but there's other ways to comb through metadata and figure it out. If there's the will and the resources, then nobody is completely anonymous online.

[-] Mindfury@hexbear.net 10 points 6 days ago

eh, just lie until this is functionally useless

cascading garbage-in garbage-out

[-] Tabitha@hexbear.net 10 points 6 days ago

As a community, we should investigate more into adversarial stylometry.

lol good luck identifying me, Adam Friedland, host of the Adam Friedland show podcast show, from my online posting - or my wife Nicole Mullen- former abortion addiction advocate

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 days ago

Certainly caution is warranted, but I would take this claim with a grain of salt.

[-] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 8 points 6 days ago

So uhh, how can we delete all of our hexbear comments?

[-] JustSo@hexbear.net 8 points 6 days ago

I bet it can't find me outside of what I've intentionally constructed.

Compartmentalise!

[-] Богданова@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 5 days ago

How can it easily unmask my secrets if I have nothing to hide? Take the mask away and there's nothing there.

[-] MayoPete@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

Surely this will be used to go after chuds and other shitty people and not anyone innocent anakin-padme-2

[-] PaulSmackage@hexbear.net 5 points 6 days ago

This is why I exclusively post here from Grapevine, Texas, USA.

[-] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 4 points 6 days ago

Good luck to the AI trying to IDentify me via stylometry, but I don't like it's chances because Oppa Gangnam Style screm-cool

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
61 points (98.4% liked)

technology

24280 readers
220 users here now

On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.

Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS