Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Conference on Financial Cryptography

FC 2003: Financial Cryptography pp 84–102Cite as

On the Economics of Anonymity

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2742))

Abstract

Decentralized anonymity infrastructures are still not in wide use today. While there are technical barriers to a secure robust design, our lack of understanding of the incentives to participate in such systems remains a major roadblock. Here we explore some reasons why anonymity systems are particularly hard to deploy, enumerate the incentives to participate either as senders or also as nodes, and build a general model to describe the effects of these incentives. We then describe and justify some simplifying assumptions to make the model manageable, and compare optimal strategies for participants based on a variety of scenarios.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Acquisti, A., Varian, H.R.: Conditioning prices on purchase history. mimeo, University of California, Berkeley (2002), http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~acquisti/papers/

  2. The Anonymizer, http://www.anonymizer.com/

  3. Back, A., Möller, U., Stiglic, A.: Traffic analysis attacks and trade-offs in anonymity providing systems. In: Moskowitz, I.S. (ed.) IH 2001. LNCS, vol. 2137, pp. 245–257. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Bergstrom, T., Blume, L., Varian, H.R.: On the private provision of public goods. Journal of Public Economics 29, 25–49 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. UC Berkeley. SETI@home: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home, http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

  6. Chaum, D.: Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses, and digital pseudonyms. Communications of the ACM 24(2), 84–88 (1981)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Cornes, R., Sandler, T.: The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods and Club Goods. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Díaz, C., Seys, S., Claessens, J., Preneel, B.: Towards measuring anonymity. In: Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.F. (eds.) PET 2002. LNCS, vol. 2482, pp. 54–68. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Diffie, W., Landau, S.: Privacy On the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption. MIT Press, Cambridge (1998)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Dingledine, R., Freedman, M.J., Hopwood, D., Molnar, D.: A Reputation System to Increase MIX-net Reliability. In: Moskowitz, I.S. (ed.) IH 2001. LNCS, vol. 2137, pp. 126–141. Springer, Heidelberg (2001), http://www.freehaven.net/papers.html

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.: Reliable MIX Cascade Networks through Reputation. In: Blaze, M. (ed.) FC 2002. LNCS, vol. 2357. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Douceur, J.: The Sybil Attack. In: Druschel, P., Kaashoek, M.F., Rowstron, A. (eds.) IPTPS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2429, p. 251. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Fudenberg, D., Levine, D.K.: Open-loop and closed-loop equilibria in dynamic games with many players. Journal of Economic Theory 44(1), 1–18 (1988)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Fudenberg, D., Tirole, J.: Game Theory. MIT Press, Cambridge (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Grossman, S.J., Stiglitz, J.E.: On the impossibility of informationally efficient markets. American Economic Review 70(3), 393–408 (1980)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Levien, R.: Advogato’s trust metric, http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html

  17. MacKie-Mason, J.K., Varian, H.R.: Pricing congestible network resources. IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications 13(7), 1141–1149 (1995)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Mazières, D., Frans Kaashoek, M.: The Design, Implementation and Operation of an Email Pseudonym Server. In: 5th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 1998), ACM Press, New York (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Palfrey, T.R., Rosenthal, H.: Underestimated probabilities that others free ride: An experimental test. mimeo, California Institute of Technology and Carnegie-Mellon University (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Raymond, J.F.: Traffic Analysis: Protocols, Attacks, Design Issues, and Open Problems. In: Federrath, H. (ed.) Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies. LNCS, vol. 2009, pp. 10–29. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Rubinstein, A.: Perfect equilibrium in a bargaining model. Econometrica 50, 97–110 (1982)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Serjantov, A., Danezis, G.: Towards an information theoretic metric for anonymity. In: Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.F. (eds.) PET 2002. LNCS, vol. 2482, pp. 41–53. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Serjantov, A., Dingledine, R., Syverson, P.: From a trickle to a flood: Active attacks on several mix types. In: Petitcolas, F.A.P. (ed.) IH 2002. LNCS, vol. 2578, pp. 36–52. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Stubblebine, S.G., Syverson, P.F.: Authentic attributes with fine-grained anonymity protection. In: Blaze, M. (ed.) FC 2002. LNCS, vol. 2357, pp. 276–294. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SIMS, UC Berkeley, USA

    Alessandro Acquisti

  2. The Free Haven Project, USA

    Roger Dingledine

  3. Naval Research Lab, USA

    Paul Syverson

Authors
  1. Alessandro Acquisti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roger Dingledine
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Paul Syverson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and DIMACS, Rutgers University, 08854, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Rebecca N. Wright

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Acquisti, A., Dingledine, R., Syverson, P. (2003). On the Economics of Anonymity. In: Wright, R.N. (eds) Financial Cryptography. FC 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2742. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45126-6_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45126-6_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40663-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45126-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation