This was a well-known design choice where the user could balance between transaction size and privacy--people who preferred faster/cheaper transactions chose to sacrifice untraceability. Nowadays, the default option enforces higher untraceability.
Also, some of the authors of the research paper mentioned in the article are part of the competitor Zcash group who sensationalise common knowledge to undermine Monero. Zcash is a US-based company that has a trusted setup which was possibly backdoored [1], one of their scientists and inventor of Zerocoin protocol publicly supported backdoors [2], and their CEO and cofounder suggested backdoors as well [3].
I would read more about Monero before dismissing it, as it's one of the very few legitimate groups in the space besides Bitcoin.
Also, some of the authors of the research paper mentioned in the article are part of the competitor Zcash group who sensationalise common knowledge to undermine Monero. Zcash is a US-based company that has a trusted setup which was possibly backdoored [1], one of their scientists and inventor of Zerocoin protocol publicly supported backdoors [2], and their CEO and cofounder suggested backdoors as well [3].
I would read more about Monero before dismissing it, as it's one of the very few legitimate groups in the space besides Bitcoin.
[1] https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/793584540891643906
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/03/bitcoi...
[3] https://twitter.com/zooko/status/863202798883577856