AI Can De-anonymize Internet Users for Under $4 with 90% Accuracy
luisdans · x · 2026-07-30
Researchers at ETH Zurich discovered that for just $1 to $4, AI can accurately identify real identities behind anonymous internet posts.
In tests on Hacker News users, the AI extracted minor details scattered across years of posts (such as city, profession, or pet's name) and successfully matched 67% of users to their LinkedIn profiles with 90% accuracy. In contrast, traditional pre-AI methods scored near 0% on the same task. This demonstrates that the assumption of internet anonymity is fundamentally broken in the era of AI.
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