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Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time when there really just weren't other options. What, you mean when services expected

Online anonymity is just a leftover from the early days of the web - a time when there really just weren't other options. What, you mean when services expected your machine to be running identd? When finger worked? When your IP uniquely identified you? When sysadmins knew your phone number? If anything, the internet has trended towards anonymity as it's aged -- the more people are online, the harder it is to track someone down.

DLWormwood 17y ago
You nailed it. The original notion was that the Internet was "peer-to-peer," but people have forgotten what this originally meant. Machines on the 'Net were expected to be somewhat sophisticated service and intelligence-wise (since they were owned and operated by universities, military establishments, etc.) IP addresses originally had identifying characteristics that could be tracked to an employer, if not an individual or department. Even when "anonymous" PCs and Macs were originally being hooked up the Internet (first directly, then later via NAT) the initial connection tools still provided support for identification via finger, message signatures and so on to continue this tradition. (Anarchie, one of the first Mac FTP clients, also doubled as a Unix-like identification stack when configured fully. Many PC video game developers, like John Carmack, continued to use .plan files prior to rise of the modern "blog.") But then the Endless September came, and most end users by this point weren't versed in "netiquette" or the whole RFC tradition to know how to use such tools and protocols, so anonymity crept in as an accidental default state. (As the drift towards the modern connotation of "peer-to-peer" demonstrates.) I personally got online about year or so before this, spent time lurking and learning the ways of the old Internet, only to watch in horror as my peers didn't give a s--t and ruined it for the rest of us.

DLWormwood 17y ago

You nailed it. The original notion was that the Internet was "peer-to-peer," but people have forgotten what this originally meant. Machines on the 'Net were expected to be somewhat sophisticated service and intelligence-wise (since they were owned and operated by universities, military establishments, etc.) IP addresses originally had identifying characteristics that could be tracked to an employer, if not an individual or department. Even when "anonymous" PCs and Macs were originally being hooked up the Internet (first directly, then later via NAT) the initial connection tools still provided support for identification via finger, message signatures and so on to continue this tradition. (Anarchie, one of the first Mac FTP clients, also doubled as a Unix-like identification stack when configured fully. Many PC video game developers, like John Carmack, continued to use .plan files prior to rise of the modern "blog.") But then the Endless September came, and most end users by this point weren't versed in "netiquette" or the whole RFC tradition to know how to use such tools and protocols, so anonymity crept in as an accidental default state. (As the drift towards the modern connotation of "peer-to-peer" demonstrates.) I personally got online about year or so before this, spent time lurking and learning the ways of the old Internet, only to watch in horror as my peers didn't give a s--t and ruined it for the rest of us.