Weighted factors for evaluating anonymity

Abstract

Many systems provide anonymity for their users, and most of these systems work on the separation between the users’ identity and the final destination. The level of anonymity these services provide is affected by several factors, some of which are related to the design of the anonymity service itself. Others are related to how the system is used or the user’s application/purpose in using the anonymity service. In this paper we: (i) propose five factors that aim to measure anonymity level from the user’s perspective; (ii) evaluate these factors for three anonymity services, namely Tor, JonDonym, and I2P as case studies; and (iii) present a mechanism to evaluate anonymity services based on the proposed factors and measure their levels of anonymity.