[teamhappy]

I'm not entirely sure what we're talking about here. Is it that anonymous communication is a double edged sword or that teenagers are kind of evil?

Either way, it would be very disturbing to see a company give out customer information without a warrant or similar, wouldn't it? Especially if the customer is a minor.

[pizza234]

> I'm not entirely sure what we're talking about here. Is it that anonymous communication is a double edged sword or that teenagers are kind of evil?

We're talking about a medium which mixes the two (and more), creating a very ill outcome (writing about group rape is no joke, and I'm sure that's not an exceptional case).

> Either way, it would be very disturbing to see a company give out customer information without a warrant or similar, wouldn't it?

This is not correct. From the article:

"A student who felt that he or she had been the target of an attack on Yik Yak could theoretically pursue defamation charges and subpoena the company to find out who had written the post."

[teamhappy]

    > [...] creating a very ill outcome (writing about group rape is no joke [...]

Everybody knows it's not a joke — everybody but kids — and everybody knows that.

    > This is not correct.

It's the last item in the FAQ[1]:

    > The federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq., 
    > restricts Yik Yak’s disclosure of user account information without
    > the lawful consent of the account holder or unless authorized by a
    > properly issued warrant, court order, or subpoena.

Effective 1986[2].

We're not talking about better education, right? Not building/using apps like Yik Yak?

[1]: http://support.yikyakapp.com/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act

[A_COMPUTER]

If Yik Yak's privacy policy is to be believed, they only store IP address and GPS location (and account id) for each post. You'd have to do an additional step of contacting ISP or phone company with the information to actually find the person. The android app requires the identity permission, but I can't tell if it sends that information back to a server somehow. They claim they don't gather that information for accounts.