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Jerrrrrrrry | 5 days ago

Throwaway accounts using "clever" turns of phrase can often be anonymized by double click, right-clicking -> googling their witty pun and seeing their the sole instance elsewhere, on Twitter, Facebook, etc

If I see a couple words I dont know in a row, I can infer a posters real name.

Id be more specific but any example is doxxing, literally so

discuss

order

SchemaLoad|5 days ago

If you have access to the whole site dataset it's much more reliable with simpler checks. You can just use word usage frequency of common words. Someone posted a demo here of doing this to HN comments which was very effective at showing alt accounts for a user.

plagiarist|5 days ago

I assume one's vocabulary is basically a fingerprint, even if one doesn't use unique turns of phrase. Domain knowledge just leaks in and we aren't conscious of it being identifiable.

somenameforme|5 days ago

It also geographic. There's a bunch of quizzes online where in 10 or 20 questions, it can tell you exactly what area in the US somebody is from. It comes down to the terms you use that you might not even realize are not universal. Highway vs freeway, what you call a sugary carbonated drink, and so on.

OTOH I think a lot of these methods don't matter that much because of plausible deniability. Stylometry and other stuff processes is always probabilistic, and can be dismissed.