An anonymous post is an entry on a bulletin board system, Internet forum or message board, blog, or other discussion forum without a screen name or more commonly by using a non-identifiable pseudonym. Some online forums do not allow such posts, requiring users to be registered. Some may allow anonymous posts, but discourage those known as "anonymous cowards" (a term coined by Slashdot). Others like JuicyCampus, AutoAdmit, 2channel and other Futaba-based image boards (such as 4chan) thrive on the anonymity. Users of 4chan, in particular, interact in an anonymous and ephemeral environment that facilitates high creativity and rapid generation of new memes.[1]
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Anonymity on the Internet is limited by IP addresses. For example, WikiScanner associates anonymous Wikipedia edits with the IP address that made the change and tries to identify the entity that owns the IP address. On other websites IP address may not be publicly available, but they can be obtained from the website controllers.
Identifying the author of an anonymous post may require a Doe subpoena. First, the IP address of the poster will be obtained from the hosting website. Through a second request, courts then order an ISP to identify the subscriber to whom it had assigned said IP address. Requests for such data are almost always fruitful, though providers often will effect a finite term of data retention (in accordance with the privacy policy of each—local law may specify a minimum and/or maximum term).
Yet there are also services that aim at making it impossible to trace back a user activity to a specific ip number - such a service is called an Anonymizer. Examples of anonymizers include I2P and Tor.
The right to speak anonymously online is protected, in the United States, by the First Amendment, and various other laws. These laws restrict the ability of the government and civil litigants to obtain the identity of anonymous speakers. The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."[2] This protection has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect the right to speak anonymously offline. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission,[3] the Supreme Court overturned an Ohio law banning the distribution of anonymous election pamphlets. The Court said, "[a]n author’s decision to remain anonymous . . . is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."[3] The Court found that "anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."[3] Various courts have interpreted these offline protections to extend to the online world.[4]
Online communities vary with their stances on anonymous postings. Wikipedia allows anonymous editing in most cases, but does not label users, instead identifying them by their IP addresses, with other editors commonly referring to them with neutral terms such as "anons" or "IPs". Slashdot permits the practice and employs the label.[5]
Many online bulletin boards require users to be signed in to write (and in some cases, even to read) posts. 2channel and other Futaba-based image boards take an opposite stance, encouraging the anonymity, and in the case of English Futaba-based websites, calling those who use usernames and tripcodes "namefags" and "tripfags," respectively.[6]
Slashdot discourages anonymous posting by referring to anonymous posters as "anonymous coward". The mildly derogatory term is meant to chide anonymous contributors into logging in.[7][8]