Anonymous Accounts and Player Safety: How Far Could Platforms Go?
Anonymous accounts have been a mainstay on the internet since its inception. In the very early days of the internet, almost all users signed into their favourite websites and interacted with other users without giving the websites so much as an email address. In those days, most people navigated the internet only occasionally needing their online pseudonym, but otherwise never needing to have their identity verified.
This has changed in the last few years. Social media services like Facebook made it normal to attach your name to your online profile. Then, in attempts to control bots and fraudsters, security checks began to grow. Email sign-ins, CAPTCHA, two-step verifications, and age verifications have all become commonplace in the online world. While these measures do serve a function, they have also made it hard to navigate the internet efficiently and anonymously. This begs the question: How far can platforms go in prioritizing their users’ privacy while still keeping them safe?
Why Do Anonymous Accounts Exist?
There are a host of benefits to using anonymous accounts online. While it is true that verified accounts and user profiles serve a useful function, they create a paper trail that makes identity theft easier.
One benefit of anonymous accounts is their fast onboarding. Users are able to sign in to websites quickly and with minimal friction. With iGaming, this can be a make-or-break factor for casual players, who find the process of onboarding to be tedious and off-putting. However, no KYC casinos offer casual players the opportunity to find websites and games that they really love before committing to sharing sensitive information. These websites let you play and withdraw your winnings without signing up. These casinos offer frictionless registration and allow players to game from anywhere in the world. They also charge minimal fees and allow players to play with crypto as well as fiat currencies.
Anonymous accounts offer the benefits of clean, simple internet use, with fewer stop-points for companies to monitor your use and activities. This is a huge win for privacy-conscious users. With many websites needing verification to join, a digital footprint is created, and this is easily co-opted by large companies built to survey the browsing habits of internet users. With privacy being a major concern, many users choose to keep their digital clutter to a minimum by using anonymous accounts.
Anonymous accounts don’t only offer benefits to users. In fact, they can also benefit businesses. Businesses that require a sign-up or log-in for use deter many potential users or clients. Allowing users to browse your site anonymously means more traffic to your website. This encourages a higher volume of later sign-ups and paid services. Anonymous accounts also increase the volume of ad revenue made on a website.
Why Is There A Pushback Against Online Anonymity?
The last few years have seen a huge pushback against anonymous internet use. This pushback has come as a way to curb the activities of bad actors. These bad actors use the internet to engage in get-rich-quick schemes by generating false revenue for their businesses. One way that they do this is through bots, which generate a high volume of traffic to a website and sporadically click on advertising links, which in turn generates a profit for the website owner.
The invention of AI has also made it easier for these activities to go undetected, as a website owner can now generate hundreds of websites and thousands of bots to trawl these websites, each generating a modest number of clicks and thus flying under the radar. This has happened on Spotify, where thousands of AI songs are uploaded, and bots generate a few thousand streams per artist, therefore not triggering the security measures that monitor these types of activities.
Similarly, age verification has become an enormous topic in the world of digital safety. In the UK, the Online Safety Act has been implemented, requiring certain online platforms to introduce strict age-verification measures. This move has been controversial, as the residents in the United Kingdom already feel overly-surveilled, with CCTV cameras placed on every street in the country.
How Far Can Online Platforms Actually Go?
There are a number of ways that platforms can implement safety measures while still valuing the privacy of their users. The first method that could be used is behavioural moderation. Using this method, platforms can use AI and other forms of machine learning to monitor chat functions, reports, and gameplay. Players are immediately removed from games where they are acting suspiciously or unfairly. This method is fast and automatic and does not gather any data on users. However, these automated bans are difficult to contest, and those players can find easy workarounds.
Another method that can be used is called digital fingerprinting. This is a method that uses data gathered based on the device rather than the user. That means that instead of gathering email addresses and usernames, the platform takes a softer approach and gathers IP addresses and other device identifiers. This method can safeguard the privacy of users while still keeping online spaces safe from fraudsters. However, on the flip side, this method is not completely anonymous, and those who wish to keep their identities and device locations totally private might still find this invasive.
Another partial measure that can be implemented is “verified player” badging. What this measure would offer is a blended approach to user anonymity. Online users who are verified can receive benefits like access to tournaments, progress trackers, and player incentives, while those who are not verified still have access to most services. This method allows players to protect their privacy. However, the downside is that the incentives might encourage players to share sensitive information with these platforms.
However you look at it, finding a balance between user anonymity and general security is a tough one to strike. Although the internet has been a safe haven for anonymous users since its inception, the organized efforts of bad actors have made it difficult for platforms to value anonymity as much as they value creating secure spaces for their user base. For these reasons, taking an approach that blends these priorities is better than pushing the limits to the extreme.
