Big Internet companies have pushed for years toward identifying users as real people, but as it turns out, the large majority of us are uncomfortable with this practice. Fifty-nine percent of people recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center agreed that they should be able to use the Internet completely anonymously, and 86 percent have attempted to cover their Internet tracks, according to a study published Thursday.

The capability to remain anonymous on the Internet is, without question, ebbing. A decade ago, the average Internet presence was a letter-and-number-jumbled forum handle or screen name, with only signatures and the barest of profiles to represent your online distillation of yourself.

Now, it is de rigueur to thread all of your online presences together under your own real name (take Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn, for example). Furthermore, some big companies require it, not only for attribution and accountability reasons, but because the profit draw of Big Data has become too, uh, big to ignore. It’s far easier to market online ads to a unified user profile than to JasonBourneFan69.

As it turns out, Internet users are feeling that invasion of personal mental territory. According to a survey conducted by Pew of 792 Internet users, the desire for anonymity appears to be highest with people between the ages of 18 and 29. Seventy-four percent of this demographic try to lower their visibility online by clearing their cookies and browser history, and 49 percent disable or turn off cookies. Forty-two percent have refused to use a site because it asked for their real name.

Across all demographics, the majority of people agreed that certain personal information should only be available to themselves and the people they explicitly authorize to access it. Eighty-one percent said it was important or very important that the contents of their e-mails remain private, and 62 percent wanted to guard which people they exchange e-mail with. Seventy percent answered that they won’t share where they access the Internet from, and 69 percent keep private which websites they browse.



While many users say they would elect to keep this information private if given the choice, part of the issue is that they often aren’t given the choice. The terms of service of many Internet sites obligate users to let companies collect and store many types of data if the users want to be able to use the site. These sites typically promise to anonymize data before they hand it off to third parties for ad-targeting, for instance.

But it’s well-proven that anonymizing is not effective, as users are identifiable by usage patterns. Without content or context, even metadata can come together to form a narrative through analysis, as the ACLU will attempt to prove in an upcoming lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) concerning its collection of Internet data and phone records.

While the survey participants demonstrate concern about whether they’re tracked, they also appear to hamstring themselves by putting way too much information on the Internet. This is a particular problem for adults under 30.

Ninety percent of users 18-29 have a photo of themselves online, and 69 percent have posted their birth date (compared to 67 percent and 47 percent, respectively, for those aged 30-49). Thirty-six percent of the 18-29 cohort have posted their cell phone number online, compared to only 19 percent of those who are 30-49.

Significant chunks of respondents were not sure what information they’ve passed on to the wide world of the Internet: 30 percent were unsure whether their e-mail address was posted somewhere, and 22 percent couldn’t say whether their home address was posted.

This seems like an odd juxtaposition of wants and actions. But between the types of information that online services encourage users to share (“Add a photo to complete your profile! Now your interests! Now your racial background! Now a DNA sample!”) and the fact that services like Facebook and Google+ make posts and some types of information public by default, it becomes easy to look back and realize that you’ve given them an inch one too many times.

Pew’s survey found that some Internet users, especially the youngest demographic, attempt to combat this by using a mix of anonymized and accredited identities. Fifty-five percent of those 18-29 and 48 percent of those 30-64 say they post material attached to their real name, but those 18-29 are also the most likely to create posts completely unattached to their identity, at 40 percent. Only 22 percent of those 30-49 and 19 percent of those 50-64 try to avoid identification entirely. These stats also suggest that young people are the most likely to try to “curate” their online presences, tying favorable things to their identity and obscuring unfavorable ones.

Given the power of data analysis and the sheer size of programs like that of the NSA, many of the attempts to stay anonymous described here would be futile against a robust collection scheme. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed stated that current privacy laws are “not good enough.” But until the law steps in, a lot of us are still trying to lay low, any way we can.