Anonymous Checker 🔍

A powerful tool to accelerate research by ensuring anonymous review compliance. Automatically scans your research projects for potential identifying information that could compromise anonymity requirements.

🚀 Features

Core Detection Capabilities

• 📧 Email Detection: Identifies email addresses in code, documentation, and configuration files
• 🏫 University Domain Scanning: Detects academic institution domains (.edu, .ac.*)
• 👤 GitHub Username Detection: Finds GitHub profile references and usernames
• ✍️ Author Information: Locates author, contact, and maintainer references
• 💬 Personal Name Detection: Identifies personal names in code comments

File Type Support

• Python files (.py)
• Markdown documentation (.md)
• Text files (.txt)
• YAML configuration files (.yml, .yaml)

📦 Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Aisuko/anonymous_checker.git
cd anonymous_checker

# Make the script executable
chmod +x anonymous_checker.sh

🔧 Usage

./anonymous_checker.sh <project_directory>

Example

./anonymous_checker.sh /path/to/your/research/project

📊 Sample Output

=== Scanning for Anonymous Review Policy Violations ===

1. Email addresses:
./src/main.py:15:    contact = "[email protected]"

2. University domains:
./README.md:8:    For questions, contact us at [email protected]

3. GitHub usernames:
./docs/setup.md:12:    Visit https://github.com/johndoe/project

4. Author/Contact references:
./setup.py:3:    author: John Smith

5. Personal names in comments:
./utils.py:25:    # John's implementation of the algorithm

🎯 Use Cases

Academic Research

• Conference Submissions: Ensure papers meet anonymous review requirements
• Journal Articles: Verify manuscripts don't contain identifying information
• Code Repositories: Clean research code before sharing for review

Open Source Projects

• Privacy Compliance: Remove personal information before public release
• Code Auditing: Identify potential privacy leaks in documentation
• Team Collaboration: Maintain anonymity in shared codebases

🛠️ Advanced Features

Multi-Format Support

The tool intelligently scans various file formats commonly used in research:

• Source code files for embedded contact information
• Documentation files for author references
• Configuration files for email settings
• YAML files for metadata containing personal info

Pattern Recognition

• Email Patterns: Comprehensive regex for various email formats
• Domain Detection: Specialized patterns for academic institutions
• URL Parsing: GitHub and other platform username extraction
• Comment Analysis: Context-aware personal name detection

🚦 Getting Started

1. Prepare Your Project: Ensure your research project is in a single directory
2. Run the Scanner: Execute the tool on your project directory
3. Review Results: Examine the output for any identifying information
4. Clean Your Code: Remove or anonymize flagged content
5. Re-scan: Run the tool again to verify all issues are resolved

📋 Best Practices

• Run the checker before every submission
• Create a backup before making anonymization changes
• Use generic placeholders for removed information
• Document your anonymization process
• Verify with colleagues that anonymity is maintained

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions to improve the Anonymous Checker:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Add your improvements
4. Test thoroughly
5. Submit a pull request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

🔮 Future Enhancements

• GUI Interface: User-friendly graphical interface
• Custom Rules: Configurable detection patterns
• Batch Processing: Process multiple projects simultaneously
• Integration: IDE plugins and CI/CD pipeline integration
• Reporting: Detailed HTML/PDF reports
• Whitelist Support: Exclude known safe patterns

📞 Support

For issues, feature requests, or questions:

• Open an issue on GitHub
• Check existing issues for solutions
• Contribute improvements via pull requests

📖 Citation

If you use Anonymous Checker in your research, please cite it as:

@software{li2025anonymous,
  title = {Anonymous Checker},
  author = {Li, Bowen and Xu, Ziqi},
  year = {2025},
  version = {0.1.0},
  url = {https://github.com/Aisuko/anonymous_checker},
  note = {A powerful tool to accelerate research by ensuring anonymous review compliance}
}

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Accelerate your research while maintaining anonymity compliance! 🎓✨