When using the internet, one may be motivated by a variety of goals or interests. For some, meeting new people or connecting with old friends would make them want to share information about themselves and make their identity known to anyone else on the web. Others have no desire or need to share their informations and take special precautions to protect their information and their identities. Research, gaming, and even stating one's opinion on a subject do not require a lack of anonymity.
Anonymity protects internet users, like gamers and people share controversial opinions on the web, from people who might be chose to attack them. Internet attacks could target people whose opinions differ from the attacker's or even people that beat them in an online game. Without internet anonymity, abusers can harrass victims on all media of the internet. Attackers with total knowledge of an internet user's identity could harrass people by making unwanted phone calls or sending unwanted packages to their houses or even executing a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, a common form of internet harrassment in which internet service is made unavailable to a user. DDOS attacks can be very annoying and disruptive, but also harmful to someone whose buisness relies on use of the internet. These types of attacks can be avoided with tools and applications that protect internet anonymity.
People who attack others on the internet are not always anonymous. People who abuse others through social media usually share the same amount of personal information as the people they abuse. Even people who "troll" through gaming networks like Xbox Live or Playstation Network typically share their name and location on their profiles, but even more surprising, these abusers make Youtube videos featuring themselves in person harrassing players through a headset for gheir amusement with no attempt to hide their face or identity.
Abuse over the internet does not come from the anonymity provided by the internet. It comes from the socially distancing perception of people that we talk to through only headsets and screens. In Milgrams obedience experiments, people more easily inflicted harm to people they only heard, but did not see, or even to people they saw through a plane of glass rather than without seperation. The type of depersonalization and social distancing that acts as a catylist for internet agression can easily be seen in other media. Have people not been harrassed through the phones or the mail in the past? Bullies exist in person and they do not wear masks. Internet anonymity wont prevent internet aggression, but it can help people to prevent themselves from becoming long-term targets of harrassment.
