2026-05-11
Update
- In practice, what I seem to be doing so far is only lightly anonymising. This means a few google or AI searches won't be able to find out who I talk to or meet with. But a private investigator putting sufficient effort will probably be able to find this out, and a govt investigation putting sufficient effort will definitely be able to find this out.
2026-02-09
minor update 2026-03-29
How much should I anonymise info about other people on my personal website?
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Wrote this to solicit quick input from others, on what they think
Main
- I am experimenting with sharing atleast some parts of my personal life online too, on this blog.
- An issue I consistently run into is having to protect privacy of people around me. Many of the events happening in my personal life are in relation to other people. Even if I say I only want to discuss my own life here, and not those of people around me, this ends up hard to do in practice.
- Example: Suppose I go on a date with Alice (imaginary character) that goes exceptionally well, and I want to sit and write about why on the internet. If I write too much detail about what happened, even anonymised, this could end up revealing details that Alice does not want revealed online. The worst case often is that it could reveal Alice's identity online when she didn't want that to happen.
- There is a spectrum of how much effort I should put into anonymising information about other people in life, when I talk about them online
- ensure a couple minutes of google search won't reveal who I am talking about
- ensure a 4chan user spending months building their bespoke AI doxxing tools won't reveal who I am talking about
- ensure a targeted govt investigation spending millions of dollars won't reveal who I am talking about
- For some of the sensitive things I work on in professional life, I really do think the standard needs to be "ensure a targeted govt investigation spending millions of dollars won't reveal who I am talking about".
- For example, I have posted a pgp-encrypted TAILS-only email address on my website. But I have also published clear disclaimers that my legal budget is not high, and my opsec when it comes to social circle is not great, and if the stakes are sufficiently high, maybe you should not be contacting me. There are journalists out there with way better opsec than me, maybe you should contact them instead.
- For atleast some of the events in my personal life, it seems okay if the standard is just "ensure a couple minutes of google search won't reveal who I am talking about"
- I don't (yet) have serious enemies who will put lots of dedicated effort to figuring out random tidbits of info like who I went on a date with or how it went.
- I seem vaguely concerned that this could change in future, and I could retroactively come to regret it. Like, imagine that in 2030 I am an actually important person and have enemies. Maybe 4chan users are busy trying to find out every person I ever talked to back in 2025 in order to send mean messages to them (or worse, find info on them to sue them, or try to get them expelled from their social circle, or similar).
- Atleast when it comes to my own personal info (and not people around me), I have thought enough about these things to just be like, bring it on, lol. I don't think I am an easy target to offend or sue or cancel or whatever, even though I reveal a lot of info about myself online.
- To be clear, this is not fun. Having to run simulations about how various potential enemies might use info against you is not fun, and it is more fun to live life not being reminded of their existence. But I think the upsides of sharing are probably worth the downsides for me.
- People around me may not be this prepared. Definitely some people around me are easier targets than me. In which case, yes, they might be correct in wanting a lot more privacy than I do.
- Often, people haven't explicitly told me how strong anonymity they want, and I have to guess on their behalf what they want.
- I could just ask them, yes. The first problem with this is that this takes time to do and everyone is busy.
- Also, maybe people around me are not actually thinking it through. Someone around me might say that they're fine with their info being publicly shared, but I might think there is some way this can be used against them that they didn't think of, and I might actually go back and tell them that.
- Vice versa, someone around me might be overly cautious, and I might try to persuade them to be less cautious.
- Atleast when it comes to people who are close to me, I think the standard I aspire to is more like "optimise for this person's long-term good" not just "don't violate the boundaries they explicitly shared with me". Like, I will do the latter for sure, but I also want to do the former.
- In practice, I often fall short of this standard, and I am working on getting better at that. This is more of a north star than something I am literally capable of following today.
- Conclusion
- I don't have actual answers to this stuff, just sharing my confusion so that others can provide input.
Side Note
- I did look into building AI doxxing tools myself. You can get quite far using stylometrics alone, but I realised that an actually successful doxxing tool is probably going to require stage 1 PII dataset, stage 2 stylometrics, and it is also going to require an actual human researcher to sit and operate.
- I didn't have the connections or the money to purchase these datasets, and I wasn't at that time interested in investing more effort into it, so I ended up abandoning this plan midway. There are definitely some data brokers both offline and on dark web who will sell these datasets.
- I have not actually built a tool that can doxx everyone so I can't claim with confidence this is exactly how it will be built. But this is my best guess.
Update
Tim Ferris on his loved ones becoming targets as he became famous
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