{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,19]],"date-time":"2026-02-19T16:55:13Z","timestamp":1771520113557,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":103,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2009,12,1]],"date-time":"2009-12-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1259625600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.acm.org\/publications\/policies\/copyright_policy#Background"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Comput. Surv."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2009,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The past two decades have seen a growing interest in methods for anonymous communication on the Internet, both from the academic community and the general public. Several system designs have been proposed in the literature, of which a number have been implemented and are used by diverse groups, such as journalists, human rights workers, the military, and ordinary citizens, to protect their identities on the Internet.<\/jats:p>\n          <jats:p>In this work, we survey the previous research done to design, develop, and deploy systems for enabling private and anonymous communication on the Internet. We identify and describe the major concepts and technologies in the field, including mixes and mix networks, onion routing, and Dining Cryptographers networks. We will also review powerful traffic analysis attacks that have motivated improvements and variations on many of these anonymity protocols made since their introduction. Finally, we will summarize some of the major open problems in anonymous communication research and discuss possible directions for future work in the field.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/1592451.1592456","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2009,12,15]],"date-time":"2009-12-15T12:55:54Z","timestamp":1260881754000},"page":"1-35","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":100,"title":["On anonymity in an electronic society"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"42","author":[{"given":"Matthew","family":"Edman","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"B\u00fclent","family":"Yener","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2009,12,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Financial Cryptography (FC'03)","volume":"2742","author":"Acquisti A."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of Pragocrypt.","author":"Anderson R.","year":"1996"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Information Hiding Workshop (IH'01)","volume":"2173","author":"Back A."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s00145-002-0128-6"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT'01)","author":"Bellare M."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_6_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of EUROCRYPT.","author":"Bellare M."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_7_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies: Workshop on Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability, H. 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