[sldev] Privacy vs Anonymity.

[Jason Giglio]

Able Whitman wrote:
 > Privacy is a concern of essentially all users, even if they aren't
 > explicitly aware of it. In fact, personal information should be

Privacy and anonymity are two different things.  The latter is not 
necessary for the former.

Your home is private, but there is nothing anonymous about it.  It has a 
sign on the front lawn, specifying its address.  Just like your 
computer.  Anyone you send mail to can get this address, for good 
reason, no one could reply without it.

To extend the analogy, what you are asking is that the post office 
deliver mail using an internal GPS tracking system so that everyone can 
take the address markers off their house.  The post office can do this, 
but it has drawbacks, such as when you need to give someone directions 
to your house (Direct client connections).

*What you all are advocating is that the post office turn into a private 
taxi service, a freight delivery service, and a pizza delivery service, 
so that no one ever needs to know any else's address.  The post office 
could do this, and protect your address, but it is not their job to 
deliver pizza and freight and people to your address, just to protect 
your anonymity.  They would do a poor job at it, anyway.  This is 
exactly the situation you are advocating putting Linden Lab in.*

There are plenty of things we can do to add *real* privacy into Second 
Life, without crippling the platform by having some silly goal of 
"protect IP addresses".

Anonymity, in any case, has some serious drawbacks that privacy doesn't. 
  It makes fraud easier.  It makes griefing easier.  A griefer doesn't 
need to worry about being banned right now, because it's by avatar name, 
not anything that matters and is a little harder to change like IP 
address or IP address block.

Fraud is a *huge* issue right now too.  These fraudsters don't care, 
because no one gets their IP except Linden Lab, and Linden Lab 
apparently won't do anything in many cases, unless Linden Lab is the one 
losing money from their fraud operation.

When you advocate this anonymity, you are giving your blessing to 
grifers, to fraudsters, to every undesirable element that wants to hide 
their identity to prevent being held accountable for their actions.

-Jason