Digital Anonymity- Victory Nta

Digital anonymity refers to remaining anonymous online and not sharing user identity with others. Some social media networks are non-anonymous, like Facebook and Twitter, while others like Yik Yak are anonymous. The speaker is against digital anonymity due to its disadvantages, such as cybercrime. They prefer their identity to be known on social media for safety reasons. Most commonly used social media networks are non-anonymous. Although digital anonymity can be violated, the speaker has not personally encountered anonymous networks. Good day everyone, I'm Victoria Covenant Ntah and this is my podcast on digital anonymity. What is digital anonymity? So an online site called Medium in their October 12, 2018 blog post defined digital anonymity as a state of remaining anonymous online such that your user identity is concealed preventing it from being shared with other online users or a third party. Also online anonymity is connected to social media networks. New York Times of March 11, 2015 listed some non-anonymous networks as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter while Yik Yak was mentioned as an anonymous network. These networks prevent your provider from tracking your IP address or physical location. So to answer question 2, my position concerning digital anonymity is the opposite. I am against it because its disadvantages seem to be more than its advantages. The very thought of hiding one's identity speaks more of harm than good. The New York Times quoted Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland that Yik Yak is increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way. Even though some people argue that it helps to make it more difficult for people to monitor your online activity, people mostly use this anonymous site for cyber crime. I would prefer to have my identity and the identity of those I relate with on social media to be known. It is safer and any unusual activity can be tracked more easily than on an anonymous platform. So to answer number 3, in my opinion social media is not currently an anonymous set of tools for communication. So why do I say this? The networks that people mostly use are not anonymous networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok and so on. Their anonymous networks are not common as their non-anonymous ones. So for example, Yik Yak is getting common among students but it still doesn't account for a high percentage of social media users. Though I agree with our textbook, SHOP 2014, that people use social media to fabricate human identities. I have stuck with a community of friends and family who like to celebrate their real birthdays and tell the truth about themselves on social media. So this completely shapes my perspective. It makes me completely avoid any anonymous and completely stick with the non-anonymous sites, networks and social media platforms. Okay, so to answer question 4, yes, digital anonymity can be violated. I personally have not encountered anonymous networks before but according to Will Winner and Winborn 2015, anonymous sites are still vulnerable and can still expose the identity of users. They explain that using these anonymous networks to move even encrypted data in and out of the cloud creates the possibility that a rogue node will make a copy of the data and attempt a brute force or cryptographic attack on it. Thank you.