Tor: The good. The bad. The anonymous. Finding the balance of anonymity.

Internet users cloak themselves behind a veil of anonymity for many reasons - some good, some evil. While it's understandable that consumers want to protect their online privacy and ensure that personal information stays private, too much anonymity might not be a good thing for online businesses. As potential victims of online fraud, merchants assess risk by using ID validation tools that detect users of Internet identity cloaking services such as Tor (The Onion Router). However, those ID validation tools can put online retailers at odds with advocates who are passionate about consumers’ privacy rights. The questions is: Is Tor good? Is it bad? Is there a common ground?