Why do people seek anonymity?

The search for anonymity on the web is often perceived as a means to act as “trolls,”who are widely decried for their negative and often personal attacks on virtually every site where comments are permitted.  However, there are other reasons why many Internet users don’t want their identity to be public.  Three HCI professors from Carnegie Mellon University examined a
 group of international anonymity-seekers to learn about their experiences.  Italics represent quotes from study interviewees:

Ninety-three percent of the interviewees reported anonymous social interactions online. Some
 anonymous social activities were idiosyncratic, seemingly done for fun or amusement. An interviewee in mainland China created a fictitious
profile on a social networking site to play a trick on a friend.

*I created a profile similar to my friend’s profile on Renren.com. Then I added all the contacts from his ‘friends’ list, and posted some funny updates daily ... since he was on good terms with me, I liked to play tricks on him. He did that to me too. (#30)*

 Many
 anonymous social activities, however, were associated with groups.
Anonymity can make it difficult for people to establish trust or get credit for one’s contributions in groups, and may hinder online community building. Our interviewees generally agreed that these
were benefits of identifiability. Nonetheless, more than half of our
interviewees were anonymously involved in various online interest groups, mostly hobby groups on topics such as fiction, music, pets, games, technology, and sports. One popular reason for anonymity was that
 the norm of those groups was to be anonymous. In a few cases, the group
 had an implicit or explicit membership standard that encouraged
anonymity in those who did not conform. For instance, interviewee #27 joined a Japanese video sharing community anonymously to hide his American identity, because the community excluded foreigners.

Although social networking generally requires using one’s real identity, half of our interviewees reported using fictitious profiles to go on social networking or dating sites, or used false personal information when chatting online. Some interviewees used different social network profiles to separate the information they shared with different groups
of people. A teacher (#17) was very active in a fandom group, and often
posted fan fiction online. She wanted to keep in touch with other
members of that community, but she was afraid that she might be
criticized if her family or her boss found out about her writing because
 it was not “real” fiction. She therefore maintained two Facebook
accounts, one under her real name for family and co- workers and one
under a fictitious name for fandom friends.

Nearly half of the
interviewees reported posting original artwork, photographs, videos, and
 writing online to share with others and receive feedback. We expected
interviewees to attach their real names to original works to gain status
 and reputation, but many interviewees chose instead to sacrifice
recognition to avoid links to their offline life. Interviewee #1
participated in various online music communities every week. She always
posted her songs anonymously so that no one at work would find them and
judge her by them.

*The reason I won't use my real name is to not connect my real life with the online community... I don’t want my supervisors and colleagues to know about the other side of my life, since that may make my image look bad. (#1)*

 Interviewees
 who posted original work also sought anonymity to manage their online
interactions. One artist told us that he built a reputation in online
communities by posting his works under a consistent pseudonym, although
he wasn’t sure that counted as being recognized for his work. He also
explained that he preferred not to log into his account at all when
reviewing other people’s work.

*When I post critiques I tend to be rather harsh.... [I’m afraid of] being targeted by someone who can't take a critique, so they might decide to try to find my alias on other art sites, and troll me in return. (#24)*

 Kang,
 R., Brown, S., & Kiesler, S. (2013). Why Do People Seek Anonymity
on the Internet? Informing Policy and Design. CHI '13 Proceedings of the
 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, 2657-2666.

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