Privacy and Anonymity

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution of privacy and anonymity issues on the Internet, examining threats, actors, and current protection methods, and discusses future research directions in safeguarding online privacy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of threats, actors, and defense mechanisms related to online privacy and anonymity, highlighting gaps and future research avenues.

Findings

Identification of key threats and actors compromising privacy

Analysis of current methods for protecting anonymity

Discussion of future research directions in privacy protection

Abstract

Since the beginning of the digital area, privacy and anonymity have been impacted drastically (both, positively and negatively), by the different technologies developed for communications purposes. The broad possibilities that the Internet offers since its conception, makes it a mandatory target for those entities that are aiming to know and control the different channels of communication and the information that flows through. In this paper, we address the current threats against privacy and anonymity on the Internet, together with the methods applied against them. In addition, we enumerate the publicly known entities behind those threats and their motivations. Finally, we analyze the state of the art concerning the protection of the privacy and anonymity on the Internet; introducing future lines of research.