One Year Of Anonyming

Well, it’s been a bit more than a year since Anonyming launched. For many months the site was down due to spam. But with a final push, spam has been virtually eliminated, the site design has been smoothed out, and we have a new focus on posting news about the state of digital anonymity and free expression.

First, an important change in how the site will run. Anonyming will now feature news about recent developments and debate about online and mobile anonymity. It came to our attention that there are news articles posted nearly every day on this topic and we decided that Anonyming would be a great place to feature them.

Anyone interested in anonymous sppech can come here to stay current on the latest developments in the legal status of online anonymity, new websites and apps that facilitate anonymous expression, and points of view surrounding the issues involved.

In addition, we’ve added a few more banners for organizations promoting and utilizing online free speech. Anonyming is proud to support those at the forefront of the struggle to keep the internet free and open.

Second, we killed the spam. About four months ago spam posts were at about 300 a day. We didn’t know it at the time, but the site had been hacked. And not knowing how to deal with the problem, we shut down the ability to post. Recently, we found a WordPress plugin that scans a site for malicious code and found that someone had infected Anonyming with code that automatically posted to the site.

With a number of changes we appear to have spam firmly under control. Words like ‘viagra’ can’t be entered into the posting form. The form tricks spam bots into doing something that prevents the form from working. And we have a plugin that keeps spam bots from being able to hack our login name and password.

Finally, we’ve done a mild overhaul to the design, with some close attention to detail. Borders are solid. Corners are rounded. Spacing is consistent. And we finally have enough posts to activate the “Load More Posts” button at the bottom of the page. It’s a nice feature that allows the site to load quickly, most important for mobile browsers.

So Anonyming is back in action. We are trying to promote the site more and hope others will help us by letting people know about the project, by reposting our posts to social media sites and apps, and by using the site when you’ve got something you want to get off your chest.