Level Of Anonymity Research Articles

A Narrative Review of Ethical Issues in Participatory Research with Young People

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) is a methodology to engage youth in the research process and is focused on emancipation and empowerment. Although benefits have been outlined, ethical issues have also arisen. This article provides a narrative review of peer-reviewed literature regarding these ethical issues. After applying standardized search criteria and inclusion/exclusion criteria, 26 articles remained. Examination of the literature revealed seven categories of ethical issues: level of participation, power, consent, risk/benefit ratio, confidentiality and anonymity, remuneration and empowerment. To mitigate these issues, recommendations are provided, including: being explicit about, and inclusive of, youths’ participation; critically reflect upon the researcher as ‘expert’; consent as an ongoing process and based on capacity rather than biological age; balancing the need to protect youth with the benefits of participation; challenge blanket anonymity policies to maximize participation and empowerment; remuneration beyond monetary compensation; and incorporate concepts of empowerment into research design and process.

Validation of a 2-item food insecurity screen among adult general medicine outpatients

Despite the growing interest in screening for food insecurity in the clinical setting, little evidence exists regarding screening formats that maximize disclosure and caregiver comfort.In this randomized trial, we asked English-speaking adult caregivers of pediatric patients in the emergency department at an urban, freestanding children's hospital to complete a validated, 2-question screen for food insecurity. Respondents were assigned via block randomization to complete the survey by either verbal interview or electronic tablet. Caregivers reported the perceived importance of the screening questions, comfort level with screening in the emergency department or in their child's primary care site, and their preferred screening modality.Of the 1818 participants, 20.6% screened positive for food insecurity. There was a significantly higher rate of reported food insecurity for those screened by tablet (23.6%) compared to those screened verbally (17.7%) (P = .002). Of those who had a preference of screening modality, 83.2% of all participants and 84.5% of patients reporting food insecurity preferred the tablet-based screen over verbal interview. Overall, more participants reported comfort completing the screen in the emergency department compared to their child's doctor's office; however, comfort in both of these setting was rated highly (86.1% vs 80.2%; P < .001).Although both verbal interview and tablet-based screening modalities were effective in identifying food insecurity, tablet-based screening had a higher disclosure rate and was the participants’ preferred screening method. There is a high level of comfort with screening regardless of clinical setting; it is possible that an added level of anonymity in the emergency department enhanced participants’ comfort levels.

Long-term Measurement and Analysis of the Free Proxy Ecosystem

Free web proxies promise anonymity and censorship circumvention at no cost. Several websites publish lists of free proxies organized by country, anonymity level, and performance. These lists index hundreds of thousands of hosts discovered via automated tools and crowd-sourcing. A complex free proxy ecosystem has been forming over the years, of which very little is known. In this article, we shed light on this ecosystem via a distributed measurement platform that leverages both active and passive measurements. Active measurements are carried out by an infrastructure we name ProxyTorrent, which discovers free proxies, assesses their performance, and detects potential malicious activities. Passive measurements focus on proxy performance and usage in the wild, and are accomplished by means of a Chrome extension named Ciao. ProxyTorrent has been running since January 2017, monitoring up to 230K free proxies. Ciao was launched in March 2017 and has thus far served roughly 9.7K users and generated 14TB of traffic. Our analysis shows that less than 2% of the proxies announced on the Web indeed proxy traffic on behalf of users; further, only half of these proxies have decent performance and can be used reliably. Every day, around 5%--10% of the active proxies exhibit malicious behaviors, e.g., advertisement injection, TLS interception, and cryptojacking, and these proxies are also the ones providing the best performance. Through the analysis of more than 14TB of proxied traffic, we show that web browsing is the primary user activity. Geo-blocking avoidance—allegedly a popular use case for free web proxies—accounts for 30% or less of the traffic, and it mostly involves countries hosting popular geo-blocked content.

Pseudonym change strategy based on the reputation of the neighbouring vehicles in VANETs

Pseudonym change schemes have been studied in VANETs to guarantee the property of untraceability of the vehicles. This paper proposes a new condition based on the assumption that if there are no malicious vehicles around when a synchronous change triggers, there is no risk of tracking, and the pseudonym change defers until a time threshold. Thus, our proposal based on a synchronous strategy to increase the anonymity set, adds to the change condition, the checking of the reputation status of the neighbouring vehicles. The reputation status is the result of discretizing the reputation score of the vehicles and it is part of the periodically broadcast beacon messages. The proposal was evaluated through simulations using a real scenario. The results showed an optimization in the use of pseudonyms maintaining similar anonymity levels with other schemes.

What Patients, Students and Doctors Think About Permission to Publish Patient Photographs in Academic Journals: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Croatia.

Use of patient clinical photographs requires specific attention to confidentiality and privacy. Although there are policies and procedures for publishing clinical images, there is little systematic evidence about what patients and health professionals actually think about consent for publishing clinical images. We investigated the opinions of three stakeholder groups (patients, students and doctors) at 3 academic healthcare institutions and 37 private practices in Croatia (total 791 participants: 292 patients, 281 medical and dental students and 281 doctors of medicine or dental medicine). The questionnaire contained patient photographs with different levels of anonymization. All three respondent groups considered that more stringent forms of permission for were needed identifiable photographs than for those with higher levels of anonymization. When the entire face was presented in a photo only 33% of patients considered that written permission was required, compared with 88% of the students and 89% of the doctors. Opinions about publishing patient photographs differed among the three respondent samples: almost half of the patients thought no permission was necessary compared with one-third of students and doctors. These results show poor awareness of Croatian patients regarding the importance of written informed consent as well as unsatisfactory knowledge of health professionals about policies on the publication of patients' data in general. In conclusion, there is a need for increasing awareness of all stakeholders to achieve better protection of patient privacy rights in research and publication.

Central bank Digital Currencies: Key Characteristics and Directions of Influence on Monetary and Credit and Payment Systems

The article is devoted to the study of prospects for digital currency issue by central banks as a new form of central bank money and to the potential of their influence on monetary and credit system. The aim of the article is to interpret and classify central bank digital currencies, to identify key characteristics of digital currencies and possible models of their issue, as well as to define the main directions of influence of digital currencies on the monetary and credit and payment systems. The scientific novelty of the article is in the systematization and comparison of different ideas about the implementation of sovereign digital currencies considering the use of distributed registry technologies. The study analyzed the projects of central banks on the issue of digital currencies and identified their features. Possible directions of influence of central bank digital currencies on the monetary and credit policy of the Central Bank and the activities of credit institutions were determined. It revealed that central bank digital currencies can be considered as a new form of money of the Central Bank, which can be issued to be used both in retail and in wholesale payments. Digital currencies may differ in some characteristics. The key ones are: a way to integrate into the monetary and credit system; emission technology; currency storage method; mechanism of mutual settlements and anonymity level. The study showed that the main incentives for introducing digital currencies are the possibility to provide an alternative and universally accessible legal means of payment, as well as to provide faster, more transparent and cheaper in-country and cross-border payments. The influence of digital currencies on the monetary and credit system and the monetary and credit policy of the Central Bank will largely depend on the scenario of their system integration. If cash is simply replaced in circulation by digital currencies, the effect on the Central Bank monetary and credit system and policy will not be significant. However, if central bank digital currencies are issued as an addition to cash, or are in parallel circulation, they can strengthen the transmission mechanism of the monetary and credit policy and increase the centralization of assets on the Central Bank balance sheet, as well as reduce the funding provided by credit institutions.

The risk of node re-identification in labeled social graphs

Real network datasets provide significant benefits for understanding phenomena such as information diffusion or network evolution. Yet the privacy risks raised from sharing real graph datasets, even when stripped of user identity information, are significant. When nodes have associated attributes, the privacy risks increase. In this paper we quantitatively study the impact of binary node attributes on node privacy by employing machine-learning-based re-identification attacks and exploring the interplay between graph topology and attribute placement. We also analyze the risk of anonymity over epidemic networks subject to different node re-identification attacks. Our experiments show that the population’s diversity on the binary attribute consistently degrades anonymity. More interestingly, we show that similar diverse populations in the SI epidemic model maintain different levels of anonymity with different infection rates.

The costs of cyberterrorism for the national economy: United States of America vs Egypt

Abstract In recent years cyber terrorism has become increasingly used with the globalization of technology and people’s access to high-speed internet. It takes place exclusively in the online environment, the advantage being that it offers an increased level of anonymity to users. Terrorist groups are targeting the misappropriation of social media accounts, focused on Distributed Denial of Service activities, exploiting communications services and banking services for fraudulent misappropriation of financial accounts. Cyberterrorism generates very high costs for the national economy, such as the involvement of specialists for detecting and correcting intrusion, declining productivity and income, costs of information theft, regaining the reputation of an institution or company, the costs relating to the resumption of production and the provision of services, the loss of information concerning intellectual property, financial manipulation using stolen information, the cost of securing computer networks and assuring them in the event of intrusion, costs generated by the time spent on recovering stolen data. In 2018 both the US and Egypt took action on these activities, the US modified its national cyber strategy and Egypt adopted the new law project to combat cybercrime. The main cyber threats they face are: threats of intrusion and sabotage of IT infrastructures, cyberterrorism and cyberwar, threats to digital identity and theft of private data, malware programs. The targets of the attacks were public sector entities, financial organizations, health care organizations, retail and accommodation. The reasons for why hackers attack these organizations are money-related, malware infected by emails, commercial and industrial espionage.

Countering passive cyber attacks against sink nodes in tactical sensor networks using reactive route obfuscation

Tactical wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are deployed by military communities for mission centric operations. The sink node is a sensor network's single point of failure and is a high priority target for an attacker. This paper focuses on the mitigation of sink node vulnerability in a tactical WSN using reactive route obfuscation. We study the issue of protecting the sink node through a common technique known as k-anonymity. To achieve k-anonymity, we use a specific routing protocol designed to work within the constraints of WSN communication protocols, specifically IEEE 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN. We use the IETF's Lightweight Ad hoc On-Demand Next Generation (LOADng) reactive routing protocol to achieve anonymity. We modify the LOADng routing protocol such that routes to the sink node are obfuscated through the use of pseudo-sink nodes. We simulate the modified LOADng protocol using a custom-designed simulator in MATLAB. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our protocol by quantifying the anonymity level achieved. We also study the effectiveness of our modified LOADng protocol to mitigate a passive cyber attack using traffic analysis that identifies and disables the sink node. Lastly, the network performance of the modified LOADng algorithm is quantified in terms of power usage, latency and path length.

TSRAM: A time-saving k-degree anonymization method in social network

Social networks provide an attractive environment in order to have low cost and easy communication; however, analyzing huge amounts of produced data can considerably affect the user's privacy. In other words, an efficient algorithm should intelligently take the user's privacy into account while extracting data for useful information. In recent years, many studies have been conducted on social network privacy preservation for data publishing. However, the current algorithms are not one-time scan; that is, for every level of anonymization, the data set must be scanned again and this is a time-consuming operation. In order to address the above mentioned issue, the present research introduces a time-saving k-degree anonymization method in social network (TSRAM) that anonymizes the social network graph without having to rescan the data set for different levels of anonymity. First, it produces a tree from the data set. Then, the anonymized degree sequence of the graph is computed based on the tree. The proposed method employs an efficient approach to partition the node degrees. It takes advantage of partitioning the graph bottom-up nodes based on the anonymization levels. Moreover, it uses two effective criteria to increase the utility of the anonymized graph. Comparing to other similar techniques, the results show that TSRAM is effective, not only to make the degree sequence anonymization of the graph one-time scan, but also to preserve the utility of the anonymized graph.

Food for Thought: A Randomized Trial of Food Insecurity Screening in the Emergency Department

BackgroundDespite the growing interest in screening for food insecurity in the clinical setting, little evidence exists regarding screening formats that maximize disclosure and caregiver comfort. MethodsIn this randomized trial, we asked English-speaking adult caregivers of pediatric patients in the emergency department at an urban, freestanding children's hospital to complete a validated, 2-question screen for food insecurity. Respondents were assigned via block randomization to complete the survey by either verbal interview or electronic tablet. Caregivers reported the perceived importance of the screening questions, comfort level with screening in the emergency department or in their child's primary care site, and their preferred screening modality. ResultsOf the 1818 participants, 20.6% screened positive for food insecurity. There was a significantly higher rate of reported food insecurity for those screened by tablet (23.6%) compared to those screened verbally (17.7%) (P = .002). Of those who had a preference of screening modality, 83.2% of all participants and 84.5% of patients reporting food insecurity preferred the tablet-based screen over verbal interview. Overall, more participants reported comfort completing the screen in the emergency department compared to their child's doctor's office; however, comfort in both of these setting was rated highly (86.1% vs 80.2%; P < .001). ConclusionsAlthough both verbal interview and tablet-based screening modalities were effective in identifying food insecurity, tablet-based screening had a higher disclosure rate and was the participants’ preferred screening method. There is a high level of comfort with screening regardless of clinical setting; it is possible that an added level of anonymity in the emergency department enhanced participants’ comfort levels.

A Two-Stage Game Model for Combined Heat and Power Trading Market

The proliferation of technologies such as combined heat and power systems and smart meters has accelerated the multienergy trading. A two-stage game model is built in this paper to analyze the optimal strategy of each player and their interactions. Specifically, in consumer game model, we present an autonomous and distributed micro energy management system among users in which power and heat are traded at the same time. In supplier game model, integrated energy suppliers receive energy demand information and share the market according to the game result. In addition, we present a detailed proof of the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium, which lays the foundation for researchers to build an effective model using game theory. Further, a distributed algorithm specifically designed for this model is proposed. The players can retain a certain level of anonymity without revealing the details of their energy consumption or generation schedules to other players. Lastly, simulation results confirm the feasibility of two-stage game model and the effectiveness of the proposed distributed algorithm.

Providing location privacy for online services in vehicular ad hoc networks

Communications through road side units in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) can be used to track the location of vehicles, which makes serious threat on users' privacy. In this paper, we address the problem of location tracking for online service access and the privacy enhancement in VANETs. Firstly, by considering the unique characteristics of VANETs, we propose an anonymous online service access (AOSA) protocol. Secondly, we analytically evaluate the anonymity and the unlinkability of the proposed protocol. Finally, a series of simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of our protocol in the real VANET environments such as Manhattan and urban scenarios. According to analytical evaluation and simulations, our protocol provides higher level of anonymity and location privacy by providing larger anonymity set and smaller tracking probability for online service access applications. Simulation results further show that our protocol is feasible and produce better performance in real VANET environments by producing higher success ratio and smaller delay.

A Bayesian approach to identify Bitcoin users.

Bitcoin is a digital currency and electronic payment system operating over a peer-to-peer network on the Internet. One of its most important properties is the high level of anonymity it provides for its users. The users are identified by their Bitcoin addresses, which are random strings in the public records of transactions, the blockchain. When a user initiates a Bitcoin transaction, his Bitcoin client program relays messages to other clients through the Bitcoin network. Monitoring the propagation of these messages and analyzing them carefully reveal hidden relations. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model using a probabilistic approach to link Bitcoin addresses and transactions to the originator IP address. To utilize our model, we carried out experiments by installing more than a hundred modified Bitcoin clients distributed in the network to observe as many messages as possible. During a two month observation period we were able to identify several thousand Bitcoin clients and bind their transactions to geographical locations.

An Effective Method for Utility Preserving Social Network Graph Anonymization Based on Mathematical Modeling

In recent years, privacy concerns about social network graph data publishing has increased due to the widespread use of such data for research purposes. This paper addresses the problem of identity disclosure risk of a node assuming that the adversary identifies one of its immediate neighbors in the published data. The related anonymity level of a graph is formulated and a mathematical model is proposed to solve the problem. The application of the method on a number of synthetic and real-world datasets confirms that the method is general and can be used in different contexts to produce superior results in terms of the utility of the anonymized graph.

How anonymity and norms influence costly support for environmental causes

Social norms are a key driver of pro-environmental action, but their influence may vary by context. An important contextual factor is behavior observability. We employ a laboratory quasi-experiment studying donations to environmental organizations under different levels of donor anonymity and under different levels of injunctive social norms. Decision observability amplifies the effect of norms: donations are 84% higher when observability is added to pro-environmental norms, compared to a setting with pro-environmental norms but anonymous decisions.

Agresja werbalna w komentarzach internetowych

The steadily growing popularity of the Internet leads to many new social phenomena including verbal aggression on the Internet called cyberbulling or flaming. This study aims to describe verbal aggression in the comments on the polish Internet. Such comments on various subjects and from websites with different levels of anonymity were analysed. The data showed among others, that the percentage of aggressive comments is proportional to the level of anonymity provided on specific websites and thatusers prefer to express aggression by using offensive, but not vulgar, language.

Is Sex Work Sex or Work? Forming Collective Identity in Bangalore

While sex worker activism grows increasingly vibrant around the world, the forms and practices of sex work vary widely, and are often secret. How do sex workers come to see themselves as sex worker activists? What tensions emerge in the formation of collective identity within sex worker activist organizations, especially when the term “sex work” has often traveled linked to transnational organizations and funding? To answer these questions, this article analyzes in-depth interviews and participant observation on sex worker activism in Bangalore, India. Focusing on an organization I call the Union, I argue that it was first within the “shop floor” of transnationally funded HIV prevention organizations, and then within the activist work of the Union, that sex workers came to identify collectively as activists at a large scale. However, distinct configurations of practice among gendered groups of sex workers in Bangalore meant each group related differently to the formation of a sex worker activist collective identity. Two aspects of sex workers’ practice emerged as particularly central: varying experiences of sex work as “sex” or as “work,” and varying levels of anonymity and visibility in public spaces. Organizing through transnationally funded HIV prevention programs helped solidify these categories of differentiation even as it provided opportunities to develop shared self-hood.

Cryptocurrency: A Challenge to Legal System

Virtual Currency (VC) is an electronic currency that is neither government-funded nor backed by central bank. VC offers potential benefits over traditional currencies, including lower transaction fees and faster transfer of funds for services provided. In 2013, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), defined virtual currency as “a medium of exchange that operates like a currency in some environments, but does not have all the attributes of real currency. In particular, virtual currency does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction”. Some virtual currencies are used as a currency in online games or a digital world, however, there is no equivalent value in fiat currency for them, so named non-convertible. In the other side, a virtual currency that can be bought with and sold back for legal tender is called a convertible currency. One of the most popular type of convertible VCs is cryptocurrencies. They use security mechanisms such as cryptography for creating units of the currency and controlling the transactions. Cryptocurrency works based on Blockchain technology. Its main property is to provide anonymity for the transactions. Bitcoin, as an instance, is a cryptocurrency that has gained much attention in the market since 2009 when it was initially introduced. Since the focus of this paper is on cryptocurrency, which is a convertible virtual currency, we will use the term cryptocurrency and virtual currency or VC interchangeably with the cryptocurrency meaning. Unlike earlier digital currencies, like e-gold, that had centralized architecture, the newer virtual currency networks are completely decentralized, with all parts of transactions performed by the users of the system. So usually cryptocurrencies use peer-to-peer technologies and no traditional financial institutions involved in transactions. This unique property provides different levels of anonymity for the users. The emergence of virtual currencies presents challenges to federal agencies responsible for financial regulation, law enforcement, consumer and investor protection. These challenges stem partly from certain characteristics of virtual currencies, such as the higher degree of anonymity they provide and the ease with which they can be sent across borders. VC also has raised concerns that they might be used to finance terrorism and to engage in other criminal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion. In this paper, we present our research on the legal issues of the cryptocurrency by analyzing the current regulations and discuss about possible solutions for the future of cryptocurrency.

A probabilistic model for anonymity analysis of anonymous communication networks

An anonymous communication network (ACN) is supposed to provide its users with anonymity attributes. As a practical matter, we need to have a means to predict the level of the anonymity provided by ACN. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic model for the security analysis of ACNs, thereby quantifying their loss of anonymity. To be precise, we have tried to obtain the probability distribution of potential senders of a message sent from an unknown source to a specific destination. With the probability distribution in hand, it is possible to define and derive some anonymity metrics. The evaluated metrics help us to gain an understanding of how much such a network may be vulnerable to attacks aiming at revealing the identity of senders of messages. Consequently, new rerouting policies and strategies can be utilized to increase the anonymity level of the network. The quantitative analysis is performed from a general perspective and the applicability of the model is not limited to a specific network. The evaluation process of the metrics using the proposed model is clarified by an illustrative example.