Stylometry

Stylometry, also known as samefag detection, is a de-anonymization technique used by e-detectives that uses pattern recognition to compare the styles of various sauces to determine that the same faggot made them all. Or to determine that two things were probably made by two different faggots. It follows the complex mathematical formula: STYLE1 = STYLE2 = SAMEFAG IS SAMEFAG. If you think you are Anonymous, stylometry can prove you wrong. The more styles that are compared, the better the conclusions. So the more you talk and the more you exist, the more you dig your own hole dumbass.

Stylometry is a process of style comparison used to dox anonymous or pseudo-anonymous people IRL or OTI, or to figure out who created something. It is used for hunting and alias-cracking and uncovering sources. Surveillancefag Edward Snowden warned that anonymity is not enough and that stylometry can be used to unmask people and link identities. Stylometry is one of the biggest threats to privacy and anonymity and therefore free speech. If you have ever read two things and thought they were written by the same person, you have used stylometry, but you were probably wrong because you suck at it and you probably think there are only 10 other people on the Interwebs.

A stylometrist, who is usually proficient in at least 100 styles, uses a samefag detector which tingles and really activates their almonds in the presence of samefaggotry, generally using a brain, or their own eyes, or they can cheat and use a computer and pwn your ass. Once stylez are known, they may set up a honeypot so you end up in their base, and force you to "show us ur n00ds."

Stylometry can be evaded by not being born, which is what your mom should have taken care of, but you can escape it right now by becoming an hero like Facebook Live amateur snuff film maker, nigger niggermurderer Steve Stephens. But DNA and other artifacts can still be used for stylometry of a person even after they die.

What does stylometry mean?

Stylometry means if you have ever made more than one thing, then you are not truly anonymous, because you can't stop talking like a fag if your life depended on it. The more things a person makes under any specific name, especially if recorded in any way, the greater the chance that any new content they make can be linked to the past, even if they use new names. Someone reusing usernames and passwords intentionally or naively links identities, but using a new username and new password for every site is an effort to be one and done. However, apparent interests of a person, especially overlapping interests, can still be used to determine samefag. Content-specific accounts might be used to throw off the scent, or IRL, disguises. Bank robbers often use ski masks or pantyhose or rubber masks to evade identification. Batman talks like a lung cancer victim to evade identification. Superman wears glasses and goes by "Clark Kent" to evade identification. However, stylometry can still be used to reveal secret identities based on other styles.

Moot on Anonymity

Subject-specific accounts or single-purpose accounts can be used to delink identities. This is similar to "prismatic identity" which moot wrote about in October 2013, and even gave a talk about at the Web 2.0 Summit in October 2011 in San Fagcisco. Although it might have been a lesbian posing as moot judging by that gay ass French Poodle hair. Some argue you need to "know your audience", "read the room", and "play to a crowd." Moot said "it's not who you share with, it's who you share as", possibly inspired by Larry the Cable Guy, but certainly presaging Bruce Jenner's transformation years later into a Living Wax Museum Exhibit with the IRL handle "Caitlyn." Moot sang said that we are like diamonds in the sky, multifaceted people, and that we all have multiple identities (aka interests), and that one person is viewed through many lenses. Moot also spoke about having embarassing interests (read: animu) and about "handles" and how it took him 4 hours to choose a username on AOL when he was underage. Compare this to Joey in the documentary Hackers from 1995, who freaks out because he needs a super awesome handle like those heroin addicts Zero Cool and Acid Burn.

In February 2014, mootJew wrote about the asshole of the Internet and 4chins and the freedom and "honesty" enabled when one can speak "without the burden of identity", basically describing the online disinhibition effect aka The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory which appeared March 2004 in some shitty webcomic, although G.I.F.T. was in reference to Unreal Tournament 2004 and how online gaymers are all assholes. Moot spoke about a place where ideas matter instead of reputations, which is similar to the hacker ethic that hackers should be judged by their hacking instead of retarded identity politics. But anonymity can still be hacked via stylometry.

Habits

Stylometry works because most people are bad at hiding their power level, it can take a lot of effort for one person to do random things at random places at random times. But people with multiple personality disorder can. Everyone else tends to fall into patterns and comfort zones. In any place where people are anonymous or use pseudonyms or aliases or disguises, stylometry can be used to expose a true identity, or simply infer further information about a person based on the fact that different demographics do different shit. For example, if someone in your neighborhood is eating dogs and nobody knows who is doing it, odds are at least 100% they are Azn, since dogeating was banned in Taiwan only last Thursday and it was the first Azn country to ban it.

Profilers will often use the term "MO" or "modus operandi" to refer to someone's habitual methods, and may identify a signature move. For example, if some guy hijacks a vehicle in a foreign country and runs over a bunch of people, odds are they are Muslim and angry about it. In the lingo of police procedurals like CSI, detectives will say they "like" a suspect for a certain crime, although stylometry can be used on anyone.

Styles

Stylometry used to identify virgins or Chads by walking style

When bad comedians say white people do this but black people do this, that is stylometry. Stereotypes are quick and dirty stylometry. Stylometry can also be based on a digital footprint or IRL footprints. Styles can be used as a kind of fingerprint, a unique identifier. Since most people are creatures of habit and just repeat the same shit all the time, stylometry notices the repetition and makes a prediction from it. A detailed dossier may have information on all of those identifying characteristics, like the digital footprint that Jewgle compiles on everyone. Some fags don't use The Google to avoid their stylometry.

Styles that can be compared to determine samefag include: signatures, handwriting, text, memes, computer code, works of art, voices, accents, audio, vocabulary, catchphrases, punctuation, fonts, emoticons, habits, schedules, timing, recent activity, appearance, height, weight, build, gait, tattoos, crime scenes, body odor, friends, associates, subject-interest, tastes, preferences, likes, dislikes, symptoms, germs, whether a victim screams the name "Skippy" or not and that's a former White House Chief of Staff's nickname, even the way people move. For example, if Bob always walks like a giant faggot but is wearing a full costume for Halloween, Alice can look at a walk and determine that a disguised person is really Bob since he's the only person who walks like a giant faggot like that. When a doctor looks at the symptoms of a patient, they are basically comparing the styles of some symptoms to previously known styles, in an attempt to reveal and diagnose an illness, or disease, or microbe, or parasite, or the fact that you are actually retarded. When someone spots Engrish online and can tell a person is not a native English speaker, that is fast stylometry. When someone is told to GTFO but comes back with the same writing style and people detect it, that is also stylometry.

Stylometry is a way of unmasking people, exposing an identity. On the other hand, cryptographically signing a text is a way of reinforcing authorship, establishing that an author is who they say they are. Or is someone who has stolen their password or some shit. Or is someone who has cracked all the hashes. However, even if someone's password has been stolen or hacked, stylometry can be used to compare one writing style to a previous writing style, or one can use challenge questions, to determine if samefag is still samefag, or an new impostor.

Trivia: Stileproject had nothing do with stylometry, but it did have everything to do with edgelordery.

Accuracy

Amateur stylometry is prone to a high degree of false positives, since so many faggots talk alike and simply repeat old memes ad nauseum. For example, you have probably never had an original thought in your life. Therefore many people can tell when OP is samefagging. But if several others are as gay as OP, someone gets lost in the crowd, so it's harder to determine samefagging. One form of amateur stylometry that improves with experience is detecting "tells" in a poker game, noticing that a player seems to always do a certain thing when they are bluffing.

Serious stylometry works off a larger sauce collection and uses computers and shit and is better at revealing samefags. So stylometry has a range of efficacy that goes from hunches to guesses to likelihood to SAMEFAG CONFIRMED. Some programs that can do stylometry analysis include: Signature, JGAAP, stylo, and Stylene. The Valve Anti-Cheat System (VAC) on Steam basically uses stylometry to root out cheaters and aimbotters. Stylometry is Checkuser for plebs. In fact, it is often amateur stylometry that leads people to suspect samefaggotry in the first place, thereby making a request for Checkuser on wikis in order to determine if someone is a samefag aka sockpuppet aka pseudonym, or in recent years, a shill. Sockhunters generally use stylometry.

Some argue that machine learning in general, like The Google's attempts with ReCaptcha to take advantage of human slaves to identify cars and street signs and grass, is an attempt to teach dumb computers how to spot samefags. Although even the way people solve captchas can create a unique fingerprint. Even facial recognition or fingerprint recognition or biometics in general is an advanced form of stylometry which relies on the unique traits of an individual, like the fact that you always smell like Hot Pockets.

Dogs are extremely good at stylometry due to their noses, and may be used as bomb-sniffing dogs, or drug-sniffing dogs, or corpse-finding dogs, or even cancer-smelling dogs, although they can't read for shit and suck at comparing artwork. Hunting and tracking in general is a form of stylometry, and ancient forms may involve following animal tracks or animal shit or footprints. When Obi Wan Kenobi said sand people always walk single file to hide their numbers, that's an attempt to avoid stylometric analysis. However, he also saw through the false flag attack made to look like it was sand people, and noticed that the blast points were too accurate for sand people, which was more stylometry, although George Lucas later forgot that plot point and made it so stormtroopers can't shoot for shit.

Notable uses of stylometry

When single mom Joanne "J.K." Rowling was done writing Harry Potter books based on ideas she ripped off from other authors, like Larry Potter, The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, and The Adventures of Willy the Wizard, she decided she wanted to keep writing shit but wanted the freedom to write whatever the fuck she wanted without anal Potterfags climbing up her ass about it. "J.K. Rowling" itself is a pen name, because she figured boys wouldn't read a book written by some bitch named Joanne. For future writing she used another "pen name" aka fake name aka pseudonym aka alias, Robert Galbraith. However, through the use of stylometry and linguistic analsys, J.K. Rowling's new identity as Robert Galbraith was exposed because she couldn't help but write like a fag so her samefagging was obvious. Although some argue a snitch exposed her before stylometry did. She has also used the obvious aliases Kennilworthy Whisp and Newt Scamander.

Pen names and pseudonyms have a long history in writing in order to hide someone's powerword. For example:

• Mark Twain was really Samuel Langhorne Clemens
• Lewis Carroll was really Charles Dodgson
• Richard Bachman was really Stephen King
• Dr. Seuss was really Theodor Seuss Geisel
• George Eliot was really Mary Ann Evans
• John Lange was really Michael Crichton
• Paul French was really Isaac Asimov
• Boz was really Charles Dickens
• Edith Van Dyne was really L. Frank Baum
• Mary Westmacott was really Agatha Christie
• Clive Hamilton and N. W. Clerk were really C. S. Lewis
• Alice Addertongue, Anthony Afterwit, Benevolous, Busy Body, Caelia Shortface, Martha Careful, Polly Baker, Richard Saunders, and Silence Dogood were all fat bastard Benjamin Franklin

Aliases and usernames and nicknames also have a long history on computers and the innerwebs, for example Captain Crunch was really John Draper, Emmanuel Goldstein was really Eric Corley, and Sabu was really Hector Xavier Monsegur. Stage names also have a long history in performing, acting, directing, stripping, and pornstarring. For example, Michael Keaton is really Michael John Douglas, Jon Stewart is really Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, Alan Smithee is a name directors use when they know their movie is shit, Lady Gaga is really Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, and Jenna Jameson is really Jenna Marie Massoli. Then Facebook decided it would be "safer" if everybody just wrote whatever shit they were thinking under their real name, but really just want to compile dossiers on everybody and their grandma like the Stasi or NSA or some shit. Many authors later admit to their aliases, although stylometry can be used to determine authorship even if they don't.

Some argue that Shakespeare was actually Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe or Edward de Vere or William Stanley or 80 other people. Although others argue that Shakespeare was Shakespeare based on stylometry. Several people have attempted to determine the identity of Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac killer using stylometry. The Unabomber may or may not have been revealed to be Ted Kaczynski using stylometry, who gives a shit.

As documented in the 1989 book The Cuckoo's Egg, an early work about cuckoldry, Clifford Stoll used stylometry and a honeypot to help track down West Kraut computer h4x0r Markus Hess, who was behind one of the first cases of a computer breakin in 1986 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California using a 1200 baud modem and was selling information to the KGB even before Carter Page was. The name of the book comes from that fact that Hess in NaziTown had cucked the lab into 75 cents of unpaid computer time back when that was a rental like some Chink internet cafe.

Mitigation

Stylometry works because people do the same shit all the time. One way to thwart stylometry, which can rip off your Epic Fail Guy mask, is to keep doing new shit. However, originality can also stand out like a sore thumb, acting as a unique fingerprint. However, most people don't make OC all the time, people are lazy and just reheat stale pasta or have favorite words or phrases or themes they reuse or some shit.

Avoiding detection by stylometry involves changing it up or switching it up all the time, which is what professional spies do, or what Jason Bourne does. Another way to avoid detection by stylometry involves blending in and looking or sounding like every other faggot around you. The phenomenon of people wearing Guy Fawkes masks in a crowd is an attempt to blend in and avoid detection by stylometry. In the book A Scanner Darkly by crazy person Philip K. Dick and the cartoon based on it, people wear a "scramble suit" which is like a zentai bodysuit but that flashes different faces and clothing at people and alters their voice, to avoid detection by stylometry. However, the content of what is said, or the subjects or locations a person keeps returning to can still be used for stylometry.

When moot made Robot 9000, it was an attempt to use stylometry to deter pasta. People who post the same unoriginal shit are muted until they can say something original.

Crazy people could be the ones most immune to stylometry, since their insanity is unpredictable. However, many crazy people are uniquely insane, like Time Cube discoverer Gene Ray. Since Gene Ray's style of speaking is unmistakable, he would have a difficult time passing for a normal person. Another person could attempt to impersonate Gene Ray's mode of speech, although whether they could fool a machine is questionable.

Protip: Try staying ahead of stylometry by eating cat shit in the hopes of contracting Toxosplasmosis and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia can be used to avoid stylometry, but not if you repeat yourself, so you may be better off using fake schizophrenia in order to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. And people with multiple personalities also have an advantage when it comes to thwarting stylometry.

Suppose a band releases a shitty new album with new shit that sounds nothing like their old shit because they were tired of samefagging. If they released the new shit under a new name, people may not even realize the same creator made it since it sounds nothing like their old shit. This is a form of compartmentalization aka sockpuppeting, a way to "throw off the scent", as if a dog was tracking them.

Compartmentalization

Compartmentalization is a way of evading detection by stylometry by basically pushing reset on pasta. It is an attempt at "de-linking" or muddying the waters to obfuscate a source and hide tracks. One notable example is a ransom note made by cutting and pasting individual letters from various texts with different fonts and sizes. However, stylometry goes beyond how something was communicated, and also includes what was communicated. If another ransom note is received, especially in a given timeframe, it may likely be a samefag. Or if someone keeps going back to the same topic repeatedly, it may likely be a samefag, like an autist talking about trains or Pokemon or Undertale.

Lurkers are perhaps totally immune to stylometry because their "style" is silence, but unless they are behind 7 proxies some sysop could probably de-anonymize them. Advertisers can also use cookies and shit to de-anonymize viewers of content and track them.

Copycats thwart stylometry by impersonating others, and use stylometry to their advantage. A forger or counterfeiter imitates or copies the styles of others, hoping to hide the true source of a product and pass off a product as genuine from another author, like a Chinaman does. For example, the CIA using Russian-made malware to hack a system and Russian proxies to blame a hack on Russia, as if any hacker worth their salt wouldn't try to hide their own steps and blame it on someone else. Some computer viruses and malware have code that mutates in order to change their styles and avoid detection by anti-virus software which generally uses unique identifiers to find malware, although heuristics and behaviorial analysis can also be used.

Stylometry today

Many stylometrists have been put out of work, since the Intel Management Engine has existed in Intel CPUs since about 2006 and is basically a backdoor, in ur base loggan ur keyz. And AMD CPUs also have their own backdoor. And smartphones like iPhones and Android phones have backdoors for NSA, FBI, and CIA.

Some argue the best OPSEC involves either never using the Internet, or making a one-of-a-kind computer with only chips with custom BIOS and custom firmware and a one-of-a-kind operating system, or not even using a computer or electronics. Some argue that Amish people and other people "off the grid" have the best OPSEC, but that's no fun. OG hacker Unixbeard Richard Stallman reportedly uses an ancient Chinkpad with coreboot or libreboot installed, and uses another server to email web pages to a teleprinter (a typewriter connected to a modem) to read offline by candlelight and then he eats the paper and saves the poop in poopjugs.

Fun Fact: Hacker Markus Hess was able to hack into that shit in 1986 by using an exploit in the movemail portion of GNU Emacs which was written by Beardman Stallman. Hooray for free software.

See also

• Batman

Stylometry is part of a series on Anonymous Visit the Anonymous Portal for complete coverage.

Stylometry is part of a series on Softwarez Visit the Softwarez Portal for complete coverage.