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The solution is simple for everyone in China, where they sensor the internet, and for everyone in the US, where they monitor the internet.

Install a VPN solution that tunnels your traffic through Europe or Panama. Most install an OpenVPN client on your machine and keep no logs of traffic in or out. I've used http://www.xerobank.com/ and http://www.metropipe.net/.

Problems with marketing to Asia is 1) the price is a bit high for most of them 2) actually being able to receive money from Chinese customers has always been a problem (you need to work with those pay-per-phone services which take 55% of your profit for themselves).

But services such as thosewould be a solution.

P.S. Anyone have a good payment solution for Chinese customers?

I took a different approach to solve this problem. Got me a VPN through an anonymity service. One that wasn't in the US, with off shore servers... http://www.metropipe.net/

The only way to ensure your personal privacy is to enforce it by using an online privacy tool run by an offshore company such as The Metropipe Tunneler Don't allow governments to fool you into thinking they will protect your privacy for you - they are your biggest threat online.

First off, I'd like to say this isn't a personal attack pointed at you. What you've said just sparked me to dump out my opinion on the subject.

I look at them more like McDonalds. They're not trying to be evil for a profit, they're just trying to profit without paying much attention to anything else. People don't have to eat at McDonalds. They choose to ignore what they know damn well is an unhealthy way of life and do it anyway. Is it McDonalds fault? Should we make sure that we have laws on health consciousness to protect us from ourselves? Too much like DRM I think.

If people didn't want to use G- mail/websearch/desksearch they don't have to. It's not like Google is quiet about collecting statistics. Indexing your thoughts and giving you really relevant adds is how they exist. I for one, and truly glad that someone has internet indexing working marginally well and that I don't have to pay for it.

The fact is, Google is just another place tracking your data. The government has been tracking all this stuff for years. Monitoring the key points on the net and taking notes down on everything. Given, Google's information about you is more easily indexed. But you can at least be picky about just what you allow through Google. Privacy has been out the window for a long time. If your neighbor really wants to know what kind of stuff you're in to, they just need check out your junkmail. Farming for information is definitely not new.

Everyone needs to stop treating the net as this ambiguous medium and use it for what it really is. You know not to eat three square meals from Mc'ds every day, you know not to use Google/gmail for things you shouldn't be doing. It is the individuals responsibility to keep what they see as their "personal data" safe, not a corporation's role to stop them every five minutes and to "STOP STOP TMI!!!!".

What you put unsecured on the net, is a public proclamation. For better or worse it is track able by so many entities in so many ways that you needn't waste your time trying to figure out who might be looking at you. It's the equivalency of sitting in a crowded cafeteria. You can't whack off and yell at anyone that might be looking at you.

Take a minute, make sure that the index https is off in your search settings. Don't send truly private data unencrypted over Google transports. If you're really worried that what you're doing can be seen: set up another browser, perhaps proxy, go test out http://www.metropipe.net/ or another pay, end to end anonymizer.

http://www.metropipe.net/

although as someone previously mentioned, any encrypted traffic will make you suspect

Wouldn't something like this be more useful?

Here's another option, designed for a USB key. It runs Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. all in a virtual linux machine. The release is planned to work on GNU/Linux, ms windows and mac os x, although the current release candidate doesn't work on the mac. It also uses qemu, of course. More info: Portable Virtual Privacy Machine.

So, this brings up a good question - What (if any) means to you use to protect your web browsing from prying eyes?
The Metropipe Tunneler is pretty cool. Cross platform client software to encrypt all of your Internet traffic out to a server that keeps no logs. Kind of steep at $99 a year
Also cool is the free Metropipe VPM which is a complete linux system that fits on a USB drive, and somehow includes their tunneling service for free...

So, this brings up a good question - What (if any) means to you use to protect your web browsing from prying eyes?
The Metropipe Tunneler is pretty cool. Cross platform client software to encrypt all of your Internet traffic out to a server that keeps no logs. Kind of steep at $99 a year
Also cool is the free Metropipe VPM which is a complete linux system that fits on a USB drive, and somehow includes their tunneling service for free...

I actually posted this a couple of days ago, but don't think I got it in in time to have actually been read:

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There is a very handy little tool called the Metropipe Virtual Privacy Machine that fits nicely on a 128MB USB drive. You pop it into a computer that is booted into Windows and can bring up a virtual machine running a tiny version of Linux, complete with GUI, web, email, etc. There is even a tool included that opens up an encrypted tunnel to Metropipe, bypassing any proxy servers or web filtering that may be in place on your network. The entire OS remains on the USB drive, leaving no temporary Internet files or other traces behind. It is nice to have if you commonly walk into restricted or monitored networks and want some privacy. The tools might also include a file browser so that you can bypass local NTFS security, but I haven't looked. I know that Knoppix (sp?) can do similar things, but this does not require a reboot or access to BIOS to allow booting of a CD ROM. It only requires that the USB is active.
The site includes download links.

Not that this is necessarily a USB root kit, but there is a very handy little tool called the Metropipe Virtual Privacy Machine that fits nicely on a 128MB USB drive. You pop it into a computer that is booted into Windows and can bring up a virtual machine running a tiny version of Linux, complete with GUI, web, email, etc. There is even a tool included that opens up an encrypted tunnel to Metropipe, bypassing any proxy servers or web filtering that may be in place on your network. The entire OS remains on the USB drive, leaving no temporary Internet files or other traces behind. It is nice to have if you commonly walk into restricted or monitored networks and want some privacy.
The tools might also include a file browser so that you can bypass local NTFS security, but I haven't looked.
I know that Knoppix (sp?) can do similar things, but this does not require a reboot or access to BIOS to allow booting of a CD ROM. It only requires that the USB is active.
The site is down for maintenance right now, but Here is the Google cache.

I prefer having a portable linux distro that works on windows and linux. See PVPM

Then again, if you are a tech who needs to download files directly to the comptuer you are servicing, PortableFireFox is probably the better bet.

I'd recommend Metropipe's PVPM

Its not a live-CD, but rather an emulated virtual PC (via QEMU and DamnSmallLinux ISO image) that can run off the hard drive or better yet a USB thumbdrive. It can work with Windows or Linux.

I've tested it on my hard drive and its pretty impressive. It got me to testing QEMU with other live-CD ISO images...

You can go to http://ipspy.metropipe.net/, for example, to test whether it's working... the IP it displays should be the IP of the SSH server.

I just downloaded http://www.metropipe.net/ProductsPVPM.shtml which uncompresses to an executable Knoppix environment. Runs on top of Windows or Linux so no need to even reboot the client machine.

Could use some updating now that Firefox 1.0 is out, but overall I found it to be a very compact and usable resource. Look forward to the release that supports Mac OS X.

Includes:
Mozilla Firefox Browser
Mozilla Thunderbird News/Email Client
Enigmail GPG (PGP Encrtytion program for Thunderbird)
Persistent home directory
Demo MetroPipe Tunneler

Encrtytion?! Encrtytion?!!! They cannot even spell encryption and expect me to trust them to set up an encryption system securely. I don't think so, keep that "product" to yourself Metropipe!

This is more secure than nothing (although there is the danger of a false sense of security!) and it would allow you to use portable encryption on machines that belong to people you trust, but that's all.

It would be much better to boot a secure OS from the key. Something like Tinfoil Hat Linux (following the link is worth it just for the Tux picture), but with more features (Tinfoil runs from a 1.4MB floppy, I think). Tinfoil can play text output as Morse Code through the keyboard LEDs, however, to prevent Tempest attacks.

Well, they've provided a torrent too, which seems quite well seeded for the moment. So, should not be a problem!

The ./ story, as well as the link (Portable Virtual Privacy Machine), say that it's 100% GPL, but at least the Mozilla parts (Firefox and Thunderbird) are under the Netscape Public License.

Should I believe anything else these folks say?

What Neo Matrix Surfer neglected to mention is that he is affiliated with MetroPipe. I believe he is one of the principals.

I have been doing this for almost a year using an offshore service called the MetroPipe Tunneler and their SOCKS Proxy.

Just basic SSH Tunneling with an easy to use system that encrypts the traffic from your machine to MetroPipe, and from there you go out on the net via Proxies and others see MetroPipe and not your IP.

What is good about MetroPipe is that they are NOT located in the USA. And they do not keep logs to even give to anyone that even asks.
Let alone all the other Proxies they offer such as POP-FTP etc.

And about speed. Give me a break. Of course there will be a speed slowdown. That is the price to pay for an additional layer of privacy.

Boo Hoo. Additional hops mean slower download speed. Fine by me. The extra privacy and anonymity is well worth it. And with todays DSL speed I get, even with the additional HOP, I still have blazing speed especially if you try and price a raw T1.

I am happy with My 2 Cents. Peace.