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One can define anonymity as a state of being namelessness. Anonymity allows someone to speak without fear of reprisal, or to do acts of charity or other forms of benevolence.

At the same time anonymity makes possible wrongdoing without accountability. With the advent of computer-based communications networks, there has been a resurgence of interest in the nature and value of certain types of anonymity. The range of techniques by which individuals are able to operate incognito creates a virtual laboratory for experimenting with the social construction of identity. Moreover, as individuals better understand how to exploit anonymity over the Internet, the limited definition of what anonymity has meant in the past becomes a broader investigation into what personal identifiers should be linked to an individual. These include date of birth, marital status, phone number (which enables this type of reverse phone loopup ) Social Security number, court records (which enables this criminal records search), property ownership, vehicle registration, driver’s license number, e-mail address, place of business, credit card history, Internet search history, Internet protocol address, and other identifiers.

Unbeknownst to many, the increasing ability to link these identifiers to an individual has resulted in a diminished ability to maintain anonymity, resulting in applications for subpoenas and court orders requiring third parties to disclose identifying information for the purposes of private lawsuits or police investigation. In light of the numerous possible identifiers in an information age, anonymity is perhaps best understood as a state of disconnection between one’s self and one’s identifiers; a state in which data cannot be associated with a particular individual, either from the data itself, or by combining it with other data. As philosopher Nissenbaum wrote, "The value of anonymity lies not in the capacity to be unnamed, but in the possibility of acting while remaining unreachable.".

Anonymity's quality of maintaining unreachability gives an individua the means of self-directed information privacy or as the legal scholar Alan Westin phrased it, "People who are able to disconnect their identities from their actions are better able to determine for themselves when and how information about them is communicated to others. Anonymity in the information age does not offer seclusion in a spatial sense, but rather a kind of isolation. In contrast, credit card transactions create a digital trail allowing a consumer's activities to be tracked and a profile to be created.

Anonymity has always been and will always be a central component of a democratic society. Anonymous voting protects citizens from the tyranny of the majority and from powerful groups. The Federalist Papers, a series of newspaper articles that became a bedrock of U.S. constitutional thought, although not truly anonymous, were written pseudonymously, using a fabricated name to cloak the identities of their authors while still allowing a mediated form of attribution. The same strategy was later employed by nineteenth-century female novelists to prevent gender discrimination from influencing how their work was received.

Alternatively, anonymity also enables unlawful associations and antisocial behavior, causing one U.S. Supreme Court justice to refer to anonymity as the “refuge of scoundrels.”

Because anonymity can yield good or bad outcomes, some perceive a conflict regarding its value and role in democratic societies. In the United States, political anonymity is a constitutional entitlement flowing from the right to freedom of expression and freedom of association. After 911, it became clear that anonymous communication is subject to the state interest in protecting national security.

By Dick Bowan of DetectiveU a surveillance blog for the DIY detective