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LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy

LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy

Gagarin1917

Comments (45)

  • Springtime
    I thought this would be more about stylometry but it's mostly about users literally posting the same identifiable information across multiple services, including in one example their age, dog name, profession.It's all classic dox profiling techniques. Even the things like spelling differences being regional signals and commonality to specific things being discussed.It's why one has to think about what is being posted to which community if using different identities, rather than posting the same things across all of them. Though any such effort would be a waste if reliant on some non-public info that later was exposed in a database breach which tied together previously unrelated profiles.
  • firefoxd
    There was a tool shared here that could show which accounts belong to the same person based on the writing patterns. Can't remember the name, but it found my old accounts on HN pretty accurately.
  • zppln
    The internet is getting less interesting by the day.
  • kanemcgrath
    Anonymous account unmasking represents a new threat to anonymity. not just this technique with llms, but the earlier text similarity one.But I think it would be generally easier to counter in the same way.Use an llm or heuristics to pose as someone else.not only do you erase your traces, you add false positives in to the system which reduces the overall effectiveness of these techniques in the future. A bit of poisoning the well.I hope eventually an easy to use tool, with maybe a small local llm, can make it easy enough to do this, so that any future deanonymization attacks would be too untrustworthy to rely on
  • Lio
    To state the obvious, we all need person, local tools to warn us when we’re making opsec errors.
  • petesergeant
    As a 32 year old Ghanaian woman living in Luang Prabang and studying as an ophthalmologist, this gives me some food for thought!
  • anon
    undefined
  • ChrisArchitect
  • nprateem
    > If you request deletion of your Hacker News account, note that we reserve the right to refuse to (i) delete any of the submissions, favorites, or comments you posted on the Hacker News siteProbably not GDPR-compliant then if comments can be deanonymised by LLMs.
  • ranger_danger
    Only if said users happen to commit OPSEC failures themselves. LLMs aren't magic...If someone can figure out who I am or what city I live in just by this username or my comments (with proof), I'll personally send you 500,000 JPY. I'm quite confident that's not going to happen though.The paper referenced in the article does not even explain their exact testing methodology (such as the tools or exact prompts used) because they claim it would be misused for evil. In other words, "trust me bro."Also see the previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139716
  • bitbasher
    One solution is to flood the network with LLM slop and hide among the noise.
  • akssassin907
    [flagged]