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Last Updated 2017-06In this session, you will introduce participants to the concept of online anonymity, along with relevant tools and practices that can help preserve this anonymity.
This session was developed for, and should be attributed to, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting resource “Cyberwomen: Holistic Digital Security Training Curriculum for Women Human Rights Defenders” under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International CC BY-SA 4.0 License
Step 1 | Start the session by asking participants – What does anonymity mean to them? After you’ve heard a few answers from the group, present the concept of anonymity in more detail to the group, explaining the following:
Step 2 | In the previous part of the session, you discussed the different kinds of online data traces that could potentially identify somebody. Now, you will highlight one that is especially relevant to an online context – the IP address:
Step 3 | Now, you will present the following tools to participants and explain how each is important to preserving anonymity online – note that each one provides anonymity in a different way or to a different level:
It is important to explain some of the key practices to consider to use each of the above tools safely, and to allow enough time for participants to install and practice using them.
Step 4 | Ask participants to check again their IP on https://whatismyipaddress.com/ - they should do this once while using a VPN, and a second time while using Tor Browser. Do they notice a difference in the IP address, or with anything else?
Step 5 | This is a good opportunity to address another point of frequent confusion for users: Incognito Mode. Many times, users think they are browsing anonymously while using Incognito Mode on their browsers – here, you should ask participants to check their IP address while using only Incognito Mode (or its equivalent, depending on which browser they are using). What do they notice about their IP address now?