Digital Shadows: The illusion of anonymity

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There were times I had my reservations about anonymity, especially as an online presence. I’ve always questioned the motive behind such actions, especially when it comes to bloggers or people who hide behind the mask of anonymity to be mischievous.

The reason for this reservation is that I’m all about accountability; really, if you need to conceal your identity to act, then you shouldn’t be acting at all, but then again, there are plenty of sides to a story or one’s intentions. I’m gradually learning that, and this has softened my perspective and views on life.

In the real sense of existence, not everyone uses anonymity in adverse ways. Some use it for protection and self-preservation. For some, anonymity can be a means of escape because, trust me, one's life and the character that they play could get overwhelming to a point that they’d just want a timeout without dying or going to jail lol.

Thus, in such situations, people who might want to act out of character would adopt the anonymity cloak to avoid pending consequences when they no longer choose to identify with the actions they carried out in their time-out mode. But then one biting reality that poses as a question is, are we truly anonymous?

I have always heard about the phrase digital footprint. I guess it could be said to be an online liter of human DNA. The fact is, as living, breathing humans, there are always imprints we drop with us as we advance or go through the journey called life. And unless one is cautious enough to avoid problems, we are never thoroughly anonymous.

I’d like to think that each invention has been given careful thought about human actions, and so for every intention and utilization, there is a matching checklist.

I remember one time in my previous employment, my colleague during that period was telling me a story of how there is no hiding place for the wicked or anyone who chooses to offend or act contrary to law. Quite frankly, this story was illustrated with how a job was contracted to someone at the office. He was paid fully for the task, and he never kept to his end of the bargain.

According to the story, the defaulter, having been knowledgeable that he could be tracked, went off-grid. When the matter was reported to my previous employer, he didn’t act immediately, and for a second there, they thought the company just might have been scammed.

What they did not know was that in that inaction was an underground work of tracking down the workman, and eventually when he was caught, everyone was wowed as they became very much aware of the phrase "you can run, but you cannot hide."

In the same vein, every time on the news we see how swindlers hiding under the guise of anonymity are being traced and revealed. We’ve seen some unmasking even on Hive, and why we might want to say, “Oh, the ones on Hive are not solid masking.” We have high-profile hackers being caught and tracked back to their own country when they decide to bite off more than they can chew by swimming in dangerous waters.