While the Supreme Court tackles a landmark case on LGBT rights, gay young folks still have to tough it out in the real world, which is sometimes loving, sometimes cruel. AnonyMouse is a service that allows gay youth to get advice and life coaching from older, wiser mentors — all while letting young people keep their true identities a secret.

The service is officially launching today with help from Change.org, the social impact platform.

In recent days, we might look around our Facebook news feeds and see signs of solidarity for the gay community. But AnonyMouse co-founder Aaron Moy (pictured) says there’s still a big need for LGBT youth and closeted folks to be able to talk anonymously with a friendly, understanding mentor.

“I think we all have the luxury of living in a major metropolitan place like San Francisco,” Moy told VentureBeat via email today.

“In some of the user research I’ve done, I feel like a majority of our users will be coming from the Midwest and South. The openness and progressive thinking in some of those cities is surprisingly outdated.”

And even in an LGBT mecca like the Bay Area, not everyone feels comfortable going public about certain issues.

“Even in liberal cities like SF, people still prefer to hide behind the cloak of anonymity,” said Moy. “In fact, I believe this is becoming more and more prevalent with teens. I research millennials for my day job and know that the their digital and real lives are becoming increasingly blurred.”

Sometimes, he said, you’re not necessarily going through a heavy personal crisis and you don’t have tons of direct questions; sometimes, you just need to talk.

“There might not be as many use cases now as there were a decade ago, but there are still many vulnerable youth that need our help,” he said. “Just look at the rising statistics of the Trevor Project.”

AnonyMouse pairs mentees with fully vetted mentors, who come from a wide range of backgrounds, from athletes to military to transgendered and beyond.

Mentees’ identities are protected; no personal information is collected, either directly or indirectly, and no information about mentees is shared with outside parties. Conversations can happen via SMS or IM.

The LGBT groups Moy & Co. are reaching out to are a great start, but the team also sees potential for the platform’s use with other groups.

“I think an anonymity-based platform could effect a plethora of demographics,” said Moy, “from recovering drug addicts and alcoholics to battered women — pretty much any group of people who are too afraid or ashamed to speak to their friends and family and want to speak to others who have gone through a similar experience. An anonymous online app could serve as a stepping stone before you gather the courage to physically attend a meeting.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Or at least that’s how it used to be. In 2013, not only does everyone know you’re a dog, but they also know your breed, coat color, and the last time you were tested for worms.

Google and Facebook like it that way. The Internet giants really don’t want anything more than to dissolve the barrier between your offline and online identities. In the perfect world, anonymity is dead, and the real name reigns.

But Internet daddy and Google chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf says that while real names have their place online, the key is to let people chose when to use them. ”Using real names is useful, but I don’t think it should be forced on people, and I don’t think we do,” he told Reuters.

“Canine User 39″ probably isn’t this dog’s real name.

Google may not force people to use their real names now, but it hasn’t had the best track record with this stuff. When it launched Google+ back in 2011, the company made the hugely controversial decision to prevent people from using pseudonyms, a rule it was forced to relax some time afterward.

More recently, Google introduced Google+ login buttons, which people use to sign up for services using their Google+ accounts. Late last year, Google also tied users’ Google Play reviews to their Google+ accounts, preventing them from anonymously reviewing apps.

The two features seem like they targeting different things, but they both tie into one word: trust. By enforcing a system wherein everyone is using their real names, Google says it can more effectively assure users that they’re dealing with real, legitimate, trustworthy people (and websites).

Mark Zuckerberg has taken the trust idea a bit further. Not only does using your real name online give people more of a reason to trust you, but that real name should be the only one you use online, he says. Here’s how he put it in 2009:

“You have one identity. … The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly. … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.“

“Lack of integrity” seems pretty harsh way to describe someone who doesn’t want his co-workers to know about his My Little Pony addiction, but Zuckerberg’s comments were in many ways an augury about the reality that we now live in today: Now that not having a Facebook account can make you look “suspicious,” it seems as if the deck is pretty heavily stacked against those who want to limit the connection between their offline and online worlds. And this will probably never change.

Photo: Flickr/ Linda Dannhoff, 

Germany is threatening Facebook via CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a $26,000 fine for disallowing German citizens to maintain anonymous identities on the social network.

Granted, $26,000 is pocket change to either entity, and privacy-related censure from European governments is not news to Facebook, which has faced a string of audits, warnings, and even formal regulation banning media usage of Facebook data in Europe over the past couple years.

The issue at hand in today’s news is anonymity. In Germany, all citizens have the right to use online services anonymously or pseudonymously, a right that, the EFF points out, can be life-saving in some circumstances.

In letters directed to Zuckerberg and Facebook’s Ireland office, data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Thilo Weichert, wrote, “It is unacceptable that a U.S. portal like Facebook violates German data protection law, unopposed and with no prospect of an end,” as The Guardian reports.

Facebook responded via email to VentureBeat, saying, “It is the role of individual services to determine their own policies about anonymity within the governing law — for Facebook Ireland European data protection and Irish law. We believe the orders are without merit, a waste of German taxpayers’ money, and we will fight it vigorously.”

While some would argue that it is entirely possible and, in fact, quite common among certain demographics, to create and use pseudonymous accounts on Facebook, we’re more interested to see how Facebook reacts to the principle of the proposed censure, since the money is obviously beside the point.

Facebook has long had a real-identity policy, something that the company says fosters genuine interaction and real connections on the site. But it would be facile not to acknowledge the role Facebook’s handling of identity has had in the company’s business success as well.

Image credit: gpaumier/Flickr

The new law, Bloomberg says, will require people to provide their full names when ordering landlines, mobile phones, and Internet connections, and it will also mandate online services such as Weibo, the Chinese Twitter, to require real names when posting or tweeting or blogging.

“The Internet is a free and open stage,” an editorial in the People’s Daily said on Dec. 24. “But absolute freedom of the network does not exist … the virtual society and social reality are inseparable.”

The editorial paints the prime issue as one of public safety and well-being, adding that with the rule of law, “the network can be more civilized, more healthy, more secure” and enhanced with more “positive energy.” Others, however, are wondering if it isn’t critique of the government’s sex scandals and shoddy handling of disasters that is more the issue.

Whatever the case, the law is certainly going to further impair online freedom in a country that already isn’t shy about censoring and restricting online communications, as Google’s Eric Schmidt said earlier this year. Although some, including Sinocism China Newsletter author Bill Bishop, say there is already no Internet freedom in the country.

reality is there is already no anonymity online in china, ESP if you use a mobile device on services like weibo. Govt can already find you

—
Bill Bishop (@niubi) December 28, 2012

True or not, the reality is that in a country with more than 538 million Internet users and a billion mobile phone owners, implementing the new law will not be easy or quick.

Image credits: Aelius Aaron/ShutterStock, M. Dykstra/ShutterStock

Burner is an app that gives you one-off numbers that go dark after you’re done using them, and it launched today. But what happens when these numbers are used by criminals? The privacy-focused company says it is ready to deal with illicit behavior and will comply with U.S. court orders.

“Burner is a very focused product around anonymity and privacy,” said Burner chief executive Greg Cohn in an interview with VentureBeat. “Part of the reason we’re doing this company is because we’re privacy advocates.”

Burner lets you buy a number to use for a certain amount of time before it’s “burned,” or goes inactive. Think of Craigslist transactions. You don’t want that guy who tried to sell you a crappy TV to have your real number sitting around. A Burner number allows you to cut off ties with that person quickly and keeps your identifying information out of their hands.

If you need more convincing, just think of the “Can I have yo number?” Mad TV sketch. Seriously, give that dude a Burner number.

Burner avoids running out of numbers by recycling “burned” numbers after a quarantine period in which the activity on the number is watched. Once activity, such as incoming calls and texts, dies down and a certain period of time has passed, the number will be given out again to a new user.

The life of a number depends on how much money you pay for it, but it can be burned at any time.

While these numbers protect your privacy, they have obvious use cases in the criminal world. Drug deals, threatening phone calls, and other scenarios where the caller doesn’t want to be traced could be facilitated by an app like this, and the Burner team is well aware of this.

But what happens when law enforcement comes knocking on the door? This is a huge issue for companies who are bent on privacy but are suddenly being asked to hand over the identities of those using its service.

“Ultimately, what we expect to do [is] adhere to U.S. laws that are valid and court orders that are valid, but we will make sure that they are [valid],” Cohn said. “We are explicitly not going after a market in the vein of Tor or Wikileaks where there’s protection from the law.”

Recycling the numbers brings up another issue. If a phone number is used for criminal activity and is then reissued to an innocent person, Burner and law enforcement will have to decipher which person committed the crime and which person to leave alone. The company says it will not reveal its tactics but says it does have a plan in place for those scenarios.

The app is free on iOS, but the numbers are not. Users buy “credit packs” that range from three credits for $1.99 to 25 credits for $11.99. You can then use your credits to load various Burner “types” on your phone. For instance, three credits will get you the “Mini Burner,” or a number that expires after seven days. Eight credits will get your a Burner number that expires after 30 days.

Burner was founded in January.

Can I Have Yo Number image via YouTube

If you were starting your own web service, would you make people sign up for an account linked to their real-world names and faces, or would you allow them to post anonymously?

This is a debate that has raged online for a while, with strong advocates on both sides. Perhaps no one is more informed about the effects of online anonymity than Chris Poole, a.k.a. moot, the founder of anonymity-fueled community 4chan.

Poole took the stage at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today to talk about identity and anonymity, two seemingly opposed forces shaping how we represent and (if we’re lucky) discover ourselves online. The young founder, who is now pouring more energy into Canv.as, an image sharing site, was passionate and eloquent in making his case.

“I don’t see myself as an advocate for anonymity any more than an advocate for identity,” he told the audience. “But I do like having choices. It’s disturbing to me that our options are being eroded by the big players in the identity space.”

The entrepreneur came down particularly hard on Google and Facebook for foisting what he called “a fast-food version of identity” on all their users.

“Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror,” said Poole, “but we’re actually more like diamonds. Look from a different angle, and you see something completely different… Facebook is consolidating identity by making us more simple than we truly are.

“We all have multiple identities. It’s part of being human. We’re all multi-faceted people.”

Poole said he was moot, the rabble-rousing hacker. But, he noted, he’s also a son, a friend, and hopes someday to be a spouse and parent. And that portrait is a lot more complex than anonymous or identified, “real life” or “cyberspace.”

“The portrait of identity online is often painted in black and white,” he said. Facebook says you have one identity; anonymity represents something chaotic online… But you can incorporate identity without asking users to make sacrifices.”

Poole says each user represents something unique to each group he connects with online, and sometimes, it’s important to choose an appropriate representation for the part of yourself you’re expressing in a particular forum.

“Picking my AOL screen name when I was a kid took four hours… it was a representation of who I was. If you go to any hacker con and ask someone what their nae is, they give you a handle. That’s the name they identity with — the name they chose themselves.”

Poole says Twitter does a great job of handling anonymity, identity and all the shades of gray between. “There’s a rich form of communication that takes place because the stream is interest-driven, not identity-driven,” he said. “And its apps support multiple accounts. Personal, business, and the whole spectrum between.”

By contrast, Poole said of Google+, “I think [Google] missed a huge opportunity to innovate by following the same principles that Facebook set up.”

He said in the past, he had told some Facebook staff that their company “sets the bar in terms of identity and privacy online, and everybody follows suit.” However, Poole now thinks differently about that.

“We set the bar as users of the web,” he told the audience at Web 2.0 Summit, “and we’re quickly approaching this fork in the road. We’re about to sacrifice something valuable and special.”

Finally, Poole challenged both creators and users of web services to consider the following each time they make a new product or sign up for one: “Facebook and Google do identity wrong, Twitter does it better, and I wonder what the web would look like if we did it right.”

Poole and Day were both keynote speakers at the huge Austin tech event. Day’s comments were just an aside in a longer talk about The Guild (the Web TV show that she writes and stars in), but I was surprised to see such visible pro-anonymity sentiment at SXSW, an event that I consider the capital of online oversharing. This is where an early adopter audience fueled the success of social networking services like Twitter and Foursquare, and where many social startups (including a number that tie into Facebook) are hoping to get a boost this year.

Poole’s comments were less surprising, since the 4chan image board is well-known for its anonymous community. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that encouraging the use of a single, real identity online leads to greater authenticity, but Poole countered that anonymity gives users the freedom to be more unfiltered and more willing to experiment.

Day clearly embraces social networking services — she has nearly 2 million followers on Twitter, and she said she loves to join new social apps so she can claim the “felicia” username before anyone else. She also acknowledged that anonymity can encourage some unpleasant, trollish behavior. Still, she said, anonymity has an important role to play online, because it frees people from the worry of being judged personally.

“A lot of us are prevented from doing things because of failure and being shamed,” she said.

And while Day didn’t refer to Facebook explicitly, it was clearly one of the sites she had in mind when she warned against “putting all our eggs in one basket” and trusting one company with our online identity — especially if that company wants to “wall us off” into one site and then market to us using our social data.

Zuckerberg has spent a lot of time talking about his stance on identity and privacy, especially recently, as Facebook has taken more criticism for its various privacy policies. (To get the flavor of his remarks, check out VentureBeat’s post about Zuckerberg’s privacy stance from last May, as well as David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect.) He’s been pretty aggressive ins advocating that users should have a single identity that’s consistent they are online, because that encourages them to be more authentic (and also means they can carry their social connections with them to any site).

Poole, who is also known under his 4chan username “moot”, said, “I think that’s totally wrong.” He’s had plenty of opportunity to observe the pluses and minuses of anonymity in action, since 4chan is well-known for its anonymous user base. (In fact, the activist hacker group that emerged from 4chan is known as Anonymous.)

Poole argued that anonymity allows users to reveal themselves in a “completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way.” One of the things that’s lost when you carry the same identity everywhere is “the innocence of youth.” (“Innocence” isn’t the first word that would come to mind when I think of 4chan, but okay, I’ll go with him here.) In other words, when everyone knows everything you’ve done online, you’re a lot more worried about screwing up, and you’re less willing to experiment. Poole compared this to being a kid, moving to a new neighborhood, and having the opportunity to start over. On the Internet, if you’re not anonymous, you don’t get that opportunity.

“The cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself,” Poole said.

In the case of 4chan, users feel a lot more comfortable trying to create funny images that can become memes, because content that doesn’t catch on disappears quickly, and they’re not weighed down by their failures. Poole said another benefit to 4chan’s anonymity, one that makes it very different from most other online communities, is that content becomes more important than the creator. Rather than prioritizing the most valued and experienced users, 4chan allows anyone to access the site and post something that could take off.

At the same time, it seems Poole’s attitude towards privacy has evolved. He’s working on a new community site called Canv.as, which actually integrates with Facebook Connect, although users can still post anonymously. Poole said the fact that “you know that we know” the user’s real identity, even if other users can’t see it, discourages people from indulging in the most obnoxious behavior.

The “Wild West” approach, while important for 4chan’s popularity, has had an effect on Poole’s ability to turn the site into a real business. Very few brands are willing to run their ads alongside content that’s so unpredictable and potentially offensive, he acknowledged.

Update: Online video star and fellow SXSW keynote speaker Felicia Day agrees.