Is Blogging Anonymously Possible? How to Write Anonymous Blog
Are you interested in blogging anonymously?
Blogging has become a wildly popular pursuit on the internet, with a low barrier to entry and the potential for great success. Many individuals have discovered the joy of sharing their passions and interests through writing and found a receptive audience eager to engage with their ideas. Whether you’re looking to share your thoughts on current events, dive into a particular hobby or interest, or simply document your life and experiences, blogging can be a rewarding and fulfilling activity.
So why not give it a try and see where your words can take you? Perhaps putting your name out there is the thing that’s stopping you. This is where blogging anonymously comes into play.
Blogging anonymously lets you be yourself – unapologetically. It protects your privacy and keeps you under the radar, allowing you to discuss controversial or sensitive issues without putting yourself and your loved ones at risk. It also protects you from hackers, who cost the global economy over $6 trillion yearly [1].
In this article, we share the reasons you should consider blogging anonymously, the sure-fire ways to improve your anonymity and minimize your digital footprint. We also give you ideas on how to make it big while maintaining an anonymous identity.
📚 Table of contents:
What is anonymous blogging?
Anonymous blogging is a form of blogging where the identity of the blogger remains hidden.
When we say “identity,” what we mean are all the personal details that might make it possible to find out the blogger’s real name, address, plus any other personal details.
There are different forms of anonymous blogging – or rather, levels of it. For example, some bloggers decide to hide their real names but keep sharing some other information about themselves, such as their country of origin or even their pictures. Others go to the absolute extreme and do everything they can to hide any piece of personal information about themselves.
There isn’t one correct way to approach blogging anonymously. It’s more of a spectrum where you can find the right spot for yourself and your own impression of how anonymous you want to remain.
Reasons to consider blogging anonymously
👉 Let’s see some of the reasons you should blog anonymously:
1. Share your big ideas or opinions without fear of government repression
Media freedom is facing an increasing threat.
Freedom House, a pro-democracy nongovernmental organization, reported that the independent press is under attack from both authoritarian governments and democracies [2].
Sarah Reppucci, a senior director of research and analysis at the organization, stated that the suppression has been ongoing for the last decade, and there’s no hope in sight for journalists.
However, you can sidestep these dark threats (at least partly) with anonymous blogging and share your opinions without fear of government repression.
2. Avoid social, business, or career backlash
Some of your opinions might not sit well with your colleagues, partners, community, or government.
If you don’t have the stomach for nasty comments, rude tweets, and intrusive calls, hiding your digital footprint could help you avoid backlash and maintain important relationships. Some people might even assault you physically or resort to armed violence. Blogging anonymously can help keep you safe.
3. You have a past to protect
Not everyone has a pleasant online past.
Simple things like Facebook photos taken in a drunken or compromising state, online lashing out at a boss, or belonging to a political organization could hurt your chances of getting a dream job, winning a contract bid, or even securing school admissions.
Blogging anonymously could prove helpful in these situations, preventing people from getting a sneak peek into a previous life you want to keep a safe distance from.
4. Shield loved ones from negative repercussions
Even if you’re not too afraid to get your own name out there and be made public online, you might not want to have the same happen to your loved ones.
Your online activities or public opinion could potentially make them a target.
Blogging anonymously can help you avoid such problems and make your family less vulnerable to various kinds of attacks or online bullying. Effectively, you’re minimizing how easily people can tie what you say or do online to your real identity and that of anyone around you.
5. You enjoy privacy
This last motivation is the simplest of them all. Frankly, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be anonymous when browsing the web or sharing a comment here and there.
This is important because it allows you to enjoy the internet without fear of your personal information being accessed or used by unauthorized parties. Being careful with your online privacy also helps prevent identity theft. Overall, your privacy is essential for protecting personal security and autonomy while using the internet.
The thing is that all our online activities leave a digital footprint. This means that your comments on other blogs can be easily tied to blog posts on your own blog. Depending on how comfortable you are with that, blogging anonymously might be a good idea.
Step-by-step guide to blogging anonymously
👉 First things first, blogging anonymously is not entirely 100% possible. But there are some ways you can achieve near perfect anonymity:
1. Use a VPN that doesn’t share or store your data
IP addresses uniquely identify devices on the internet, making it easy to trace them. However, with a VPN, you can establish an encrypted connection with whatever website you happen to be browsing at the moment, keeping you private from prying internet eyes. This encrypted connection can also be established with your own blog at the time when you’re working on a new entry – thus helping you blog anonymously.
Top VPNs for blogging anonymously
How to use a VPN
- Download your VPN software of choice
- Pick a server you want to connect through
- Click the button to connect to the VPN server
- Start blogging
Note: Some VPNs might slow down your connection. Also, the sole use of VPNs is illegal in some countries, so be sure to check what your local regulations are so that you don’t get yourself in trouble from the very start.
2. Anonymize your email address
Setting up an anonymous email address can come in handy, especially since most of the tools out there that you will want to use for blogging anonymously will require an email address from you.
For starters, you can get a new Gmail account for yourself and use that instead of your usual – everyday – email address. However, keeping it truly anonymous will prove difficult since Google is rather good at interconnecting all of its services and ultimately tying your real identity to your seemingly anonymous fresh Gmail profile.
Alternatively, you can use self-destruct emails or email providers that have made it a point to offer a privacy-first experience.
Where to get private email
- Proton Mail has made a name for itself in the online privacy space. They offer anonymized email addresses that are hard to track.
- Tempbox is a simple solution for whenever you need instant disposable emails.
- Guerrilla Mail is another service that provides you with disposable email addresses – you get to keep them for as long as you stay logged in.
- AnonAddy is an interesting tool that lets you set up anonymous email forwarding.
Going the extra mile
- When sending an email, always use a good VPN service.
- Consider using Hushed or BurnerApp for a temporary phone number.
3. Provide bogus information
Another great way of protecting your personal information for your anonymous blog is to use bogus information whenever possible. This includes your name, email address, and other information that might lead people to you.
Why do this? Basically, it is always going to be better to provide bogus information about yourself vs to submit your real data and then trying to keep it hidden. There’s always the risk that someone will uncover it. This is especially true if you believe that the available technology cannot fully protect you from the public.
For starters, you can use a pen name generator such as Reedsy or Name Generator to come up with a non-obvious name for yourself. From there, use the name to set up an email address and start building your anonymous blog around it.
4. Use a host and blogging software that support user anonymity
Blogging truly anonymously will be rather difficult to do if your blog software provider or web host doesn’t respect your privacy or simply asks for too much info on signup.
You have two paths you can take here to help solve these issues – somewhat:
First, you can try buying a standard hosting setup with a company that allows anonymized payments – usually via Bitcoin. One of such hosts is Hostinger. While they will let you pay with Bitcoin, there is still the issue of needing to provide personal details about the person registering for their service. It’s up to you how you want to tackle this issue.
Alternatively, you can pick a hosted blogging platform altogether – one that allows anonymous users and entries. Some of the options are:
- WordPress.com – as long as you’re willing to go through all the verification and setup processes using your anonymized email.
- Telegra.ph – for quick entries.
- Write.as – simply write an entry and have it published on the web.
- Notepin – meant to serve as a personal notepad, but the entries are visible publicly.
- Notion – this might be an unconventional solution…Notion is an all-in-one productivity solution. Among its many features, it also allows you to publish any note/page to the web.
Going the extra mile
- Use an anonymous email to register with any of these services.
- Choose a pen name for your blog.
5. Remove EXIF data from your media files
Most digital cameras and smartphones embed some metadata called Exchangeable Image File (or EXIF for short) with every picture you take using them.
This EXIF data contains critical Personal Identifiable Information (PII) like your location, date, the time you took the photo, and more. Removing this data from your pictures can improve your anonymity.
Luckily, removing EXIF can be done very easily. Just use any of these tools prior to uploading images to your blog:
Note: Photo apps use EXIF data to organize photos. Removing this data can make your gallery look untidy. It also means you’ll be unable to add copyright information to the photo.
How to promote an anonymous blog
Luckily, promoting your anonymous blog isn’t much different from promoting a regular one. The main difference is that you have to make sure not to take any action from your actual – personal – email addresses or social media profiles.
👉 Here are three methods you can use to promote your blog without revealing your personal identity:
Use social media
These days, basically all social media platforms are geared towards trying to integrate with as many other solutions and websites as possible. Even if you’re careful about these things, it’s more than easy to overlook a prompt here and there, or a notification about some new setting, and thus have your personal profile share a post from your anonymous blog by accident – or come in interaction with it in some other way.
It’s advisable to use a completely different web browser for any of your social media activity, and never be logged in to any social media profiles when working on a new blog post for your anonymous publication. You just don’t want to risk it.
Start by creating an anonymous page and profile. You can use the same privacy email account that you used to start the blog in the first place. Use that email to verify your sign-up details on different social media platforms.
Make sure that you don’t inadvertently provide your personal information on your social media pages.
Once done, you can go about promoting your blog using conventional means, such as by building a community through groups and pages.
Additionally, and this goes without saying, you should lock down your personal social media profiles to be as private as possible. The exact features and steps to achieve that with specific platforms change very frequently, so unfortunately we can’t give you any step-by-step instructions here.
Buy ads through an agency
If you want to promote your anonymous blog through online ads, your best bet is to do so through a third-party agency. The agency will serve as a buffer between you and the ad network.
Otherwise, if you wanted to promote the blog on the network on your own, the network would most likely require you to submit your personal info to validate the ads and set the payments.
Land guest posts
Publishing guest posts on other blogs has been one of the more effective promotion methods in the blogging space.
Such a guest article is meant to share advice with the readers of the other blog and then convince them to come back to your blog to learn more about the topic.
The great thing is that most guest blog hosts don’t really care about your identity as much as they care about quality content.
Guest posting allows your site to grow by leveraging more authoritative site traffic. To do this:
- Look for relevant link sources and find out whether they accept guest posts.
- Find out how you can reach them. Sites that accept guest posts also provide different ways to reach them.
- Check out their guest posting guidelines. This makes it possible for you to follow their guest posting rules.
- Add your backlinks to the content. Make sure that the links are all relevant and lead to quality content on your site.
- Promote your backlinks. Use your social media pages and other avenues to promote your guest posts.
Start blogging anonymously today 🎯
If you’re in a situation where sharing your thoughts could put you or those you care about at risk, blogging anonymously may be the solution. With this guide, we hope to make it easier for you to start your anonymous blog and keep yourself and your loved ones safe while sharing your thoughts online.
😎 Follow these tips to get started, and feel free to implement as many of them as you see fit to ensure the anonymity of your blog.
Do you have any questions about blogging anonymously that we didn’t answer? Let us know in the comments section below!
Was this article helpful?
No