"R. A. Hettinga" wrote: > > At 2:16 PM -0700 10/2/03, bear wrote: > >That's not anonymity, that's pseudonymity. > > It seems to me that perfect pseudonymity *is* anonymity.
Conventionally, I think, Anonymity is when one publishes a pamphlet of political criticism, and there is no name on the pamphlet. When the same person publishes a second pamphlet, there is nothing to connect the two. (Other than style, of course.) Psuedonymity would result if "Whielacronx" were to appear on both pamphlets, so the readers could establish a reputational link between the pamplets. Anonymity doesn't support a connection. Now, I think there is value in trying to use these terms as much as possible in alignment with their old world roots. But that might not always be possible.... So, in this sense, on the net, it is impossible to open a connection anonymously. The TCP/IP connection system requires a source IP number, and then allocates a port. So a psuedonym of IP/port gets allocated for the length of the connection. > Frankly, without the ability to monitor reputation, you don't have ways of > controlling things like transactions, for instance. Bearer tokens normally achieve untraceability, in the pure technical sense. As most bearer systems include a conventional identity based account of some form, the notion of anonymity is confusing, as certain actions can reverse the untraceability and reveal the identities of the accounts. E.g., double spending. Of course, in the media and literature, anonymity is widely used to refer to untraceable bearer tokens. As anonymity isn't so useful in its own right, there appears to be few real problems with this usage, until one starts bandying around more than one concept. Psuedonymous systems for transactions are normally the reverse: traceable, but one can only see the chosen psuedonym, and that is not directly related to any other info that might be useful. But you knew all that :-) > Who's also curious about exactly what "Whielacronx" means... ;-). My guess is that it is what Zooko's son says when he is learning his name. iang --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
