Safeweb Turns Off Free Service

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Seems like Safeweb was the last one to cancel providing free anonymizing service. Rest in peace, Safeweb, I loved you a lot. With Anonymouse down and Anonymizer.com restricted, are there any free services left for those suffering from corporate oppression?"

Comments

Sweet Irony

[yatest5]

I totally dig the fact that the submitter of this story was 'anonymous coward'...!

Re:Sweet Irony

[sllort]

I totally dig the fact that the submitter of this story was 'anonymous coward'...!

I dig it too, because that's the real irony. Anonymous Cowards here aren't, because their IP addresses are still subject to subpoena, and there's a 2 week long window where Slashdot stores the IP address as an MD5 hash, which can be easily defeated. Think Church of Scientology.

The only way to make AC posts truly "anonymous" is to post through an anonymous HTTP proxy that instantly "forgets" the source IP address. This is what Safeweb provided, and now it's gone. The irony is that the Anonymous Coward who posted the story probably isn't Anonymous.

Of course, there are still other anonymizers, but Safeweb was the best known.

Re:Sweet Irony

[Mwongozi]

This is what Safeweb provided,

Actually, it didn't. SafeWeb kept logs for seven days.

noproxy

[DMDx86]

Noproxy still works. There is also a list of free services at antiproxy. I personlly run my own CGI Proxy on my home server while I am at school.

Re:noproxy

[Doomdark]

Just a guess; he's more worried about the school finding out his browsing habits (or blocking access to sites), than about web sites profiling him?

To work adequately the connection has to be encrypted (ssl should be ok here I guess), or the target-URL has to be encrypted. Otherwise it's trivial to still track usage, although, this has to be done manually (unless cgi-arg passing uses some existing de facto standard?).

You are right though, this won't work for the other big problem, snooping at the other end... And that's why safeweb (or similar) was really neat thing to have (even with those 7 days logs someone mentioned... as long as you realize it 's not all THAT anonymous).

Gee, big surprise there, another free site down

[Brento]

Seems like Safeweb was the last one to cancel providing free anonymizing service. Rest in peace, Safeweb, I loved you a lot.

Hmm, you loved it a lot, but you're not willing to pay, eh? Sounds like the tombstone of every other dot-com. What's the surprise here? When people realize that you have to pay to play, maybe the dot-com economy will change. News flash, folks, if there's something good, and you love it, you need to chip in and contribute. If you don't, as they say on public radio, nobody else will.

Re:Gee, big surprise there, another free site down

[Brento]

Ummm, re: public radio... I thought that was supposed to be supported with tax dollars. Tax dollars that are collected and spent even if I don't use public radio/TV.

Nope, public radio is no longer allowed to accept government funding. Hasn't been for years. It's 100% listener-supported. For example, KUHF here in Houston is allowed to broadcast from the university campus, but that's about the only freebie they get. The government-funded thing is a common misconception.

Re:Gee, big surprise there, another free site down

[GTRacer]

Are you sure? From CPB's own website:

Less than half of the industry's total income comes from tax-based sources such as federal, state, and local governments. Sixty-one percent of the income is from private sources such as businesses and memberships.

...and...

How much does the federal government contribute?
In 1999 Congress appropriated $250 million to CPB, approximately 11.6 percent of the industry's total income.

...or this...

By law, 95 percent of the funds allocated to CPB go directly to benefit viewers and listeners either through Community Service Grants to stations, programming grants to producers, or other station-related activities.

Are you telling me that NONE of this money makes it to any public radio stations? Where I live, the public TV and radio station share the same facilities.

But I could be wrong. I have been wrong before...

GTRacer
- Still missing Dan Hickman and "Metro".

CIA Investors

[rsimmons]

Isn't it funny that one of Safeweb's main investors is a company controlled by the CIA called In-Q-Tel. Here is Safeweb's investors page.

Re:CIA Investors

[John Carmack]

I have a very interesting tale about this.

One of the suppliers to Armadillo Aerospace told me about an experiment that he tried. He was looking over the logs to his (very low traffic) site, and he wondered how an anonymized hit would show up in the logs. He went through Safeweb, and saw a properly obscured address in the logs.

One hour later, he also got a hit to the same page from cia.gov.

I'm sure this isn't standard practice for every access, but his site was probably on a hot list of some sort due to the aerospace content.

John Carmack

SilentSurf are

[Jon Chatow]

... avaliable from here and here.

Aren't they mostly small services?

[Ratface]

AFAIK the majority of anonymiser services have gone underground to the extent that they tend not to want to advertise their services, working instead by word of mouth. Personally I wouldn't even want to be a user of an anonymising service where the operator/s weren't in some way known to be to be trustworthy.

There's possibly more safety in diversity when it comes to anonymising services. (Though that is debatable)

Hiding in crowds

[iamcadaver]

There is still work being done with AT&T's crowds. Basically, the caveat is that you have'ta share the load if you wanna use the service. Good karma there.

So?

[Quasar1999]

Why not do it yourself? Its not all that hard to mask your IP, or pull a couple of the same tricks spammers use to spam people... anonymously at that...

JAP

[seite-f00f]

http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de is still beta but
working...

If you're paying, it's not anonymous

[tony_gardner]

So you're sending your credit card details to an anonymising service. How long will you stay anonymous?

Re:If you're paying, it's not anonymous

[ethereal]

Contrariwise, no anonymizing service is going to be able to retain legal services to fend off attacks on anonymity without having some form of income. So either some wealthy benefactor pays for "free" anonymity because they believe in it, or else everyone has to chip in to preserve their own privacy.

Sneakemail is still around

[Vicegrip]

I like to use sneakemail for hiding my true email address from the multitude of lists and webpages I sometimes use.

Alternatives?

[jacoplane]

Perhaps there are still some free alternatives. I haven't tried any of those listed though. Maybe someone can provide some feedback.

The other possibility of course is to use something like Freenet. Although nobody is totally anonymous on freenet, at least everyone is almost anonymous, which I feel is much better than the current situation. Of course, big-brother types will disagree and claim it is far too dangerous.

Get over it, or take constructive action

[Tassach]

OK, so a bunch of anonymous email servers have gone down, either because they can't pay the bills or they are afraid of lawsuits. Get over it.

If you feel that strongly that the world needs anonymous, untraceable email, stop whining and do somthing about it. Set up a server, host it somewhere, and let people know where it is and how to use it. If you can figure out how to make it make enough money to cover expenses, more power to ya! Free services are great, if someone else is paying the bill. It's a different story when you're the one signing the checks. If you really believe this kind of service should be free for everyone, put your money where your mouth is and underwrite the venture, otherwise shut the F*** up.

anonymizing services? feh

[ajuda]

Why do we need anonymizing services (essentially hacks) when excellent substitutes are in the works? Projects like Freenet are providing new protocols which are specifically designed with anonymity in mind.

ssh

[Spock the Vulcan]

You could do what I do - run squid+sshd at home, set up a tunnel with ssh port forwarding from your office to home:

ssh -C -L 3128:<home-ip>:3128 -N <home-ip>

and then set localhost:3128 as your proxy. Of course, this is assuming you have an always-on connection at home.

Re:ssh

[sporty]

Search freshmeat for http tunnel. You can do some sick stuff, tunnelling ssh via http to your home machine to do a proxy. Thank God this doesn't require that much CPU for it :)

Orangatango

[de_boer_man]

Orangatango provides a great method of surfing anonymously for extremely reasonable prices. I love their "MailBlox" email anonymizer.

Orangatango is based on a pretty cool idea: Rather than my computer negotiating a connection with every site I want to connect to, my computer negotiates a connection with Orangatango, and Orangatango does the rest. To the outside world, it looks as though Orangatango is making all of the requests. Maybe it's not a unique idea, but they have implemented it extremely well.

Yeah, I know that I have to give them my credit card and that makes my connection ultimately traceable through one means or another, but it's a far cry better than surfing directly through my ISP.

They have additional benefits other than just the anonymization as well. It really is "the web on your terms" as Orangatango claims. They're worth a look! Check them out.

Before you ask, I'll answer that no, I am not affiliated with Orangatango. The only reason that I know about them is that I applied for a development position at Orangatango a year ago. I've kept my eye on them (as well as my browser pointed at them) ever since.

Re:Orangatango

[stevey]

Orangatango is based on a pretty cool idea: Rather than my computer negotiating a connection with every site I want to connect to, my computer negotiates a connection with Orangatango, and Orangatango does the rest. To the outside world, it looks as though Orangatango is making all of the requests. Maybe it's not a unique idea, but they have implemented it extremely well.

That's what us computery people call a Proxy, or Proxy Server ...

Corporate Opression? Gimme a break!

[zarathustra93]

Good god, if you want to surf for pr0n, do it at home. What is so hard about that? While at work, you should be doing your job and not spending your whole time surfing the internet. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but chances are that your employer has hired you to do something other than surf. This isn't the man trying to smack you down afterall :-)

Its called Economics, Stupid.

[libertynews]

Life costs money. It ain't free. Bandwidth costs money, as do computers, support people and lawyers. If you have no income you cannot maintain a service, no matter how 'popular' it is. If something is useful to you, then you ought to be willing to support it monitarily. Otherwise it is going to go away.

TANSTAAFL

SSH to your house?

[brunes69]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this, since I've ben doingit forever. Anyone with broadband (cable/dsl) has a fast enough connection to simple SSH to their house, and forward ports over the conneciton. Thus, I have my web browser proxy set to 127.0.0.1:8000, whihc is forwarded to my home PC proxy over the SSH connection.

Re:can you say MIA?

[glowingspleen]

The new USPS regulations prohibit the delivery of mail without a return address.

It's easier to just throw your money into a lake.

you could set up your own proxy

[josepha48]

Try using proximotron (sp) it is a proxy that is used for filtering. It does however mask your user agent and things. Also using mozilla will allow you to prevent unwanted cookies. Basically between mozilla and proximitron (or another proxy) you could essentially mask who you are except your IP address. Things like user-agent and other headers going into and out of your machine are masked. Rejecting cookies and preventint companies like doublecluck from setting cookies or images on your machine also puts up a 'wall of fire' between you and the internet. Lastly I'd put up a firewall and reject all new connections from outside sources (unless your running a service like httpd or ftp or ssh). Many webservers for some reason like to make new connections to my machine after the transaction is done. This is a known issue, so my firewall rules just drop those packets to the floor and it does not hurt my system.

I guess without these types of services people will have to learn how to protect themselves on the web. Besides how long do you think many of these services can stay free on the web? I'm kinds supprised /. has not talked about charging to post yet....

Fundamentalist oppression needs a break!

[MadAhab]

I put up an anonymizing proxy somewhere and ran it for a year or so. Threw out the logs after analysis. But found out that most of my traffic was from United Arab Emirates. They used the site for surfing porn, which is blocked by their country. They also used it for reading news that I doubt they can easily get there.

So if all it means is that some rich Arabs can get easy access to porn, so what. It might just mean that someone from a religiously repressive and sexually repressed society learns that if you look at porn, it doesn't make you blind, it doesn't turn you into a rapist, and if your spouse/SO shares your tastes, it could even enhance your sex life. And the 5% of the time they were reading news sites might just give them a wider view of the world. All of which might make their country, eventually, more tolerant. So you can whine all you want, but sometimes the inability to surf porn is the man smacking people down, and sometimes the ability to surf porn is a sign that freedom exists, regardless of whether exercising that freedom at any given time is wise or tasteful.

Anonymous browsing helps law enforcement

[DzugZug]

When I worked for the Attorney General's office, we used to investigate online fraud and would routinely use anonymizer.com and other services in order to view suspect web pages without *.gov showing up in their logs. If they see a few of those hits they quickly pack up, move to a new state, and buy a new domain.