New App Anonymizes Writing by Identifying, Then Stripping Style Cues

New App Anonymizes Writing by Identifying, Then Stripping Style Cues

A new app from researchers at Drexel University can spot what makes an author’s writing unique and replace it with a more generic style.

Called Anonymouth, the program works by looking for “stylistic markers" like commonly used words, punctuation, and sentence rhythm. The idea behind it is that as Internet privacy becomes more of an issue and technology allows even greater levels of tracking individuals, people will want a way to interact with others online and still retain some level of anonymity…

In a study looking at several hundred anonymous Internet forum users, the app was able to identify 80 percent of the users by simply looking at their posts. In a presentation the researchers gave on their work, they said that the tool even works when looking at writing from completely different contexts: “Function words are very specific to the writer. Even if you are writing a thesis, you’ll probably use the same function words in chat messages.”