Unmasking Anonymous Email Senders 204
alphadogg writes "Just because you send an email anonymously doesn't mean people can't figure out who you are anymore. A new technique developed by researchers at Concordia University in Quebec could be used to unmask would-be anonymous emailers by sniffing out patterns in their writing style from use of all lowercase letters to common typos. Their research, published in the journal Digital Investigation, describes techniques that could be used to serve up evidence in court, giving law enforcement more detailed information than a simple IP address can produce."
For the lulz (Score:4, Insightful)
E E Cummings, that blatant spammer (Score:4, Insightful)
Turns out most spam is written by e e cummings.
Who'd have thought it?
Re:Pretty print it first (Score:5, Insightful)
They seriously think an 80% success rate is good enough to be used in court?
I'm betting the real reason is so they can go to a judge with their pseudo-evidence to get a warrant for more invasive spying.
I can imitate your writing style (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse than false negatives would be false positives. Maybe those death threats to your boss sound just like you, use the same words you use, the same grammar, everything. That's because your jealous coworker pirated himself a copy of this program, fed some writing of yours through it, and then kept editing those death threats until the program claimed they sounded just like you.