Anonymisation

1 What does anonymisation of data mean?

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2 Imagine you use a VPN to circumvent censorship in your country. What does your Internet Service Provider (ISP), that can be legally bound to hand over data to your government, see about your internet connection?

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3 Imagine you use the Tor network to circumvent censorship in your country. What does the Tor network see about your internet connection?

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4 With a VPN or the Tor browser, you can hide on the level of the IP address what you do on the internet, especially if your Internet Service Provider is legally bound to hand over your data to a government that you consider as your adversary. Is it enough to be “anonymous” on the internet?

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Evaluation

1 What does anonymisation of data mean?

Your answer was wrong:

Anonymisation means that no data is used any more at all, so that a communication is invisible for everybody. 

Explaination:

No. Data is always necessary for a communication to be successful. Anonymisation, however, is a technique that makes it difficult for this data to be linked to the person who wants to be anonymous.

Your answer was wrong:

Anonymisation means that a message (‘plain text’) is encoded into a secure version (‘ciphertext’), so that only the authorised parties can read it, preferably only the sender and the recipient. The message can only be read by parties that are able to de-anonymise it, using a unique, secret key.

Explaination:

No. This is an explanation for encryption, which is different from anonymisation.

The correct answer is:

Anonymisation means that personally identifiable information is either removed, encrypted or hid behind a pseudonym, so that an adversary cannot link the data to the person who wants to be anonymous.

2 Imagine you use a VPN to circumvent censorship in your country. What does your Internet Service Provider (ISP), that can be legally bound to hand over data to your government, see about your internet connection?

The correct answer is:

The ISP sees that I use the VPN.

Your answer was wrong:

The ISP sees that I use the VPN and which websites I access, but it cannot block the websites anymore because of the VPN.

Explaination:

No. The ISP sees that you use the VPN, but not which websites you access.

Your answer was wrong:

The ISP does not see anything about my internet connection anymore.

Explaination:

No. The ISP sees that I use the VPN.

3 Imagine you use the Tor network to circumvent censorship in your country. What does the Tor network see about your internet connection?

Your answer was wrong:

The Tor network sees that you use Tor.

Explaination:

No. Tor is a decentralised network of servers, in which no single server sees that you use Tor or what websites you access. Therefore, you are anonymous.

Your answer was wrong:

The Tor network sees that you use Tor and which websites you access.

Explaination:

No. Tor is a decentralised network of servers, in which no single server sees that you use Tor or what websites you access. Therefore, you are anonymous.

The correct answer is:

Tor is a decentralised network of servers, in which no single server sees that you use Tor or what websites you access. Therefore, you are anonymous.

4 With a VPN or the Tor browser, you can hide on the level of the IP address what you do on the internet, especially if your Internet Service Provider is legally bound to hand over your data to a government that you consider as your adversary. Is it enough to be “anonymous” on the internet?

Your answer was wrong:

Yes. The IP addresses are the unique identifier on the internet. Hiding my IP address makes me anonymous.

Explaination:

No. There are many other ways to de-anonymise users on the internet, although IP addresses are often the most important way to de-anonymise user.

The correct answer is:

No. There are many other ways to de-anonymise users on the internet. For example with advertisement trackers, browser fingerprints or because a user communicates with clearly identifiable addresses like a publicly known email address. 

Your answer was wrong:

Yes, but only if the VPN provider is trustworthy and does not cooperate with the government.

Explaination:

No. There are many other ways to de-anonymise the users on the internet, although IP addresses are often the most important way to de-anonymise users.

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