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The Drawbacks of Anonymous Surfing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the staying-under-the-radar dept.

BlueCup writes to tell us that one reporter decided to give anonymous web surfing a shot, and found it to be much more trouble than it was worth. Many users take advantage of Tor and other anonymous web browsing tools, but is the amount of hassle worth the effort it takes to remain anonymous?

9 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Torpark by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative
    Many users take advantage of Tor and other anonymous web browsing tools, but is the amount of hassle worth the effort it takes to remain anonymous?
    This is a joke, right?

    If you have a few seconds, download Torpark and try it out. It shouldn't take more than half a minute and is Firefox based and pretty much automated.

    And if you're worried about having to put Torpark on every machine you use, just put it on a very small USB thumbdrive on your keychain. Plug it into whatever computer you're using and browse the thumbdrive. Double click and go -- no need to worry about leaving personal information on your friend's computer. The application itself is very tiny so it would fit on even very cheap USB drives and there's a Thunderbird extension for it. I was at a conference once and got a free 512MB thumbdrive. I sharpied it as Torpark and now I can serf anonymously if I need to.

    The only hassles I can find is that I have it set to not cache anything at all which means sites don't load as fast when I revisit them normally on my desktop. Also, the Tor servers can sometimes be slow to forward packets or the German ranged IP address it masks me with will cause a page to render in German. Oh gut, das ist wert es wohl.
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Torpark by dshaw858 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Many users take advantage of Tor and other anonymous web browsing tools, but is the amount of hassle worth the effort it takes to remain anonymous?

      I think that this must be a joke. Guys, you're missing the entire point of using Tor. Tor usage isn't designed for script kiddies who don't want the FBI on them, child pornography rings afraid of Interpol or nerdy teenagers that don't want their IP logged (although these are all applications of Tor, too). Tor was designed for electronic freedom for people in, for example, totalitarian regimes that don't allow freedom of speech, or whistleblowers on governments, major industry, etc.

      Having a little bit of "a hassle" is fine for the designed type of use. People trying to communicate anonymously out of the Great Firewall of China don't worry if it takes an extra few seconds. The nerdy teenager that thinks anonymity is cool (not that I have anything against this guy), might think it's not quite so cool to wait forever to have a site load, and be banned from things like Slashdot and Wikipedia (via the Exit Nodes).

      The article is inherently flawed, since it's looking at Tor from the wrong perspective.

      - dshaw

  2. Re:Tor speed by RPoet · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're not supposed to tunnel BitTorrent over Tor. That slows the network down for everybody, including those who have a need for anonymity for legitimate than getting the latest movie flick.

    --
    "Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
  3. Re:Moo by Krojack · · Score: 3, Informative

    I just encrypt my entire /home partition. Its another way to help.

  4. Did you RTFA? by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative

    The "hassles" he talks about are mostly the lost convienences of cookies and the occassional site that doesn't work w/out cookies.

    Seriously.
    That about sums up his complaints.

    I'm not terribly impressed by the issues he discovered while using an anonymizing service.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Did you RTFA? by kinglink · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you are doing anonymous browsing in the first place, you're probably not going to want cookies. Option might be nice, but I have a feeling anyone that interested in privacy will only allow it on a few sites.

  5. Tor's slow, but not a hassle by Saeger · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tor's not a real hassle to use, but it is slow (just like FreeNet is), and always will be.

    To use Tor, simply install it, then tell your browser (or privoxy proxy) to use the socks proxy on port 9050 (or wherever). Nothing much can be done about the sluggish latency and low bandwidth, though, because for true anonymity to work you just HAVE to relay through a certain random number of random nodes of various quality. So instead of taking 15 fast intra-country hops to reach Google, it might take 100+ hops all over the globe and back, with each hop being another weak link in the chain.

    Speed is the #1 reason I don't use Tor much... except for the rare occasion when I need to upload beheading videos^W^W^W send ransom notes^W^W^W troll IRC^W^W hide p2p downloads^W^W^W research something privately.

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  6. It's not about by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Informative

    what forensic traces are left on YOUR machine.

    It's about what trace you leave across the Internet/Googlesphere/SkyNet.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  7. Tor is Easy via Transparent Proxy by PureFiction · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can make Tor very easy to use with any application (on Windows or other VMWare/OpenVPN supported OS) with JanusVM:
    http://januswifi.dyndns.org:85/

    When you start the Windows VPN connection to the VMWare virtual machine that PPTP network becomes you default route. All DNS lookups, http requests, and other TCP traffic is now transparently routed through Tor. Simply disconnect the VPN to terminate anonymous onion routing...

    Also see the user documentation: http://januswifi.dyndns.org:85/Instructions.htm

    Transparent proxy avoids many common problems with explicit SOCKS configuration and DNS leaks. Worth a look...