Towards a Tree-Based Taxonomy of Anonymous Networks

In the boundless digital world and global society of the Internet, anonymity and privacy are becoming increasingly important issues. Many anonymous networking protocols have been proposed and numerous empirical investigations over these networks analyzed; however, no known taxonomies exist for consumers to quickly and easily identify which anonymity properties are offered by the disparate wired and wireless anonymous networks. This paper proposes a novel tree-based taxonomy (TBT) which allows the consumer to choose a desired classical or state-of-the-art anonymity protocol depending upon their specific network environment and anonymity requirements. The two key anonymity properties of unidentifiability and unlinkability and various network types are explored. This paper highlights the expanding definition of anonymity and aids consumer and researcher classification of state-of-the-art technological privacy-preserving anonymous networks.