When Writing, How Anonymous Can You Be, Really?

An anonymous reader writes "Do you still think your online writing is, basically, anonymous? Think again! Research has it people put much of their personal traits into their writing, and computers may just be able to pick them up. That's at least what a recently announced competition on author identification (Given a document, who wrote it?) and author profiling (Given a document, what are its author's age and gender?) wants to find out. Alas, re-using other people's writing is no solution either; there's also a competition on plagiarism detection (Given a document, is it an original?). Wanna revisit your recent rants?"

Comments

No -- he got the guy's name from WHOIS

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

The only thing that Barr did correctly was look up WHOIS info on the People's Liberation Front's website after an Anonymous guy claimed to be "Supreme Commander" of the PLF... When Barr confronted him, the guy claimed it was a joke, so Barr pointed to an innocent man instead. (Ars Tech article on the 'correct' Commander X.) Otherwise, Barr's tactics -- including analyzing what the people wrote -- gave him completely wrong answers.