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Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#111

Post by pc86 »

nsonha wrote: post #85
cik wrote: post #72

So.. I'd suggest a project of mine. Full disclosure, you require more than one burner device. Ultimately you'll want a VPN you can trust. Also - it depends how much your anonymity is worth to you, and your relative cost. Similarly - to whom do you want to be anonymous? I wanted to create a fully digital individual. My goal was to go from end to end. I bought (in cash) a prepaid credit card. I used said prepaid credit…

not related but is "prepaid credit card" a debit card? Also why is the card with the debt is called "credit" and the one with actual money is called "debit"? Driven me crazy.

No, a "prepaid credit card" is a credit card with a balance of $0 but you pre-pay a certain amount. So you buy a card for $500, you can charge up to $500 on it then it's useless. Similar, but not linked to any bank account.

A debit card debits from your account. A credit card requires the bank to extend you credit.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#112

Post by [deleted] »

mathrawka wrote: post #27

If you prefer to use a pseudonym, why not just register an LLC? There are services out there that will register your company and be your registered agent in states that do not require your name ever made public (Wyoming for example). These services also provide a mailbox that would work for anything you need. You can then get a business checking account (Mercury works well) with your newly registered business. You ca…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#113

Post by ghaff »

pc86 wrote: post #109
Dracophoenix wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct. However, anything that can be disclosed to the US government can always be disclosed to the public, whether by law or by leak[1]. I did say the law makes establishing anonymous LLCs difficult. I didn't say establishing them was impossible. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

This should still be fine, especially for LLCs which presumably exist at least conceptually in order to make money. The government has a well-defined, broadly accepted (outside the fringes) interest in knowing who is doing commerce and making money. Making money completely anonymously, without reporting this to the IRS and state tax authorities, at least in the US as a US citizen, is and should be illegal. But still…

The 90% use case is that someone wants to make it quite hard for an Internet rando (or maybe their employer) to connect them to their "true name" and, by extension, all the other data connected to their true name--likely including their address among other things, especially if their name is uncommon or other data is already known. This is pretty easy in the US.

Making it so no one can make the connection is much harder (as in close to impossible) and probably illegal in many cases especially if money is changing hands.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#114

Post by happyopossum »

nsonha wrote: post #85
cik wrote: post #72

So.. I'd suggest a project of mine. Full disclosure, you require more than one burner device. Ultimately you'll want a VPN you can trust. Also - it depends how much your anonymity is worth to you, and your relative cost. Similarly - to whom do you want to be anonymous? I wanted to create a fully digital individual. My goal was to go from end to end. I bought (in cash) a prepaid credit card. I used said prepaid credit…

not related but is "prepaid credit card" a debit card? Also why is the card with the debt is called "credit" and the one with actual money is called "debit"? Driven me crazy.

When you have a credit card, the issuer is providing you credit, and a debit card draws on debits from your checking account.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#115

Post by happyopossum »

petercooper wrote: post #82
New_California wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we can't. Bitcoin *is* anonymous against average Joe which is what the OP needs here. Pretty irrelevant here but for your fucking information, with significant expert effort, Bitcoin *can* be also anonymous against big actors.

I'm being tongue in cheek here, but to support your point a little, if Bitcoin was not generally anonymous in nature, we'd know who Satoshi is.. no? :-)

Does Satoshi regularly receive bitcoin donations and convert them to USD? If he did I'm reasonably certain that someone could figure out his identity. The list of people that the US Govt (as an example) wanted to find and couldn't trace through bitcoin transactions is very short...

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#116

Post by happyopossum »

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

It is, yes. You can simply self-sign and then tell users how to bypass the security warning, which is what you're already doing so what's the problem? It's a common misconception that macOS forces all software to be signed by Apple. It doesn't. ARM Macs require all software to be signed, but crucially, any signature is OK at the kernel level . It's only at the first-run-from-finder level that Gatekeeper gets involved…

> 3. Hold down the control key and right click it, then choose open.

It's actually either Ctrl-click or right-click.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#117

Post by renonce »

ghaff wrote: post #95
krageon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people are horrible and when you are well-known, this translates into legions of horrible people who know who you are and see you as something to maybe bother. Anonymity should be the first choice for public-facing work, if you enjoy your life as it is and are not interested in hiring security.

Enough with the drama. The vast majority of people with public facing work (whether code, books, etc.) use their real names and don't need to hire security. That's not to say stuff doesn't sometimes happen but it's not the norm.

When you are part of a company or some entity, the risk is smaller since the credit goes to your company rather than yourself. When you work for yourself that's not the case.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#118

Post by ghaff »

krageon wrote: post #107
ghaff wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough with the drama. The vast majority of people with public facing work (whether code, books, etc.) use their real names and don't need to hire security. That's not to say stuff doesn't sometimes happen but it's not the norm.

Something with significant risk that is reasonably easy to mitigate should just be mitigated. Nobody loses with that, except maybe if they view that as drama.

There can also be significant disadvantages to totally disconnecting anything you do online from your professional identity. If the two things really don't have anything to do with each other--say you're a developer and write risque fiction on the side--it may make sense to use a pen name and that's not uncommon.

However, many professionals in the tech space and elsewhere have online work that is intimately connected with their day job--and may even be part of their day job. In that case, anonymity is not really an option.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#119

Post by morpheuskafka »

pc86 wrote: post #111
nsonha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not related but is "prepaid credit card" a debit card? Also why is the card with the debt is called "credit" and the one with actual money is called "debit"? Driven me crazy.

No, a "prepaid credit card" is a credit card with a balance of $0 but you pre-pay a certain amount. So you buy a card for $500, you can charge up to $500 on it then it's useless. Similar, but not linked to any bank account. A debit card debits from your account. A credit card requires the bank to extend you credit.

In that case the card effectively is a bank account of its own and often has features such as accepting direct deposit. I believe those cards are regulated as Reg E (EFT/debit) and not Reg Z (credit). They aren't regulated as banks, though a lot of them do place the money with a bank to get FDIC protection, but there was a major regulation change for these accounts a few years back that added more requirements for fee disclosure and ID verification.

Re: Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?

#120

Post by honkdaddy »

cik wrote: post #72

So.. I'd suggest a project of mine. Full disclosure, you require more than one burner device. Ultimately you'll want a VPN you can trust. Also - it depends how much your anonymity is worth to you, and your relative cost. Similarly - to whom do you want to be anonymous? I wanted to create a fully digital individual. My goal was to go from end to end. I bought (in cash) a prepaid credit card. I used said prepaid credit…

> Use the above to set up a corporation with nominee shareholders

How are you anonymous in this case? It doesn't seem like the VPNs are gonna make any difference if the government still knows exactly who you are when the tax man comes knocking.

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