Common threats

3. Threats to anonymity

Anonymity is often confused with privacy, but they're distinct concepts. While privacy is a set of choices you make about how your data is used and shared, anonymity is the complete disassociation of your online activities from your real identity.

Whistleblowers and journalists, for example, can have a much more extreme threat model which requires total anonymity. That's not only hiding what they do, what data they have, and not getting hacked by malicious actors or governments, but also hiding who they are entirely. They will often sacrifice any kind of convenience if it means protecting their anonymity, privacy, or security, because their lives could depend on it. Most people don't need to go so far.