Slashdot Mirror
The Drawbacks of Anonymous Surfing
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?
The Tor concept is a great idea, and seems to work okay, but the last time I tried it, it was so slow that it was mostly unusable. Has much changed in the past 6 months or so?
"expects to go into politics"
or is already in politics for that matter.
The value of annonymous surfing to be worth overcoming hasstles is directly proportional to the damage you habits would cause should they get out.
Lost job? -> possibly
Divorce? -> maybe
Prison time? -> likely
loss of big money? -> yes
execution? -> Certainly.
-nB
That's about as I rank it.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
This is not true as javascripts can read your normal IP address. It can even get your local IP address. Except I've noticed that if you setup a local webserver and set that webservers IP address to 127.0.0.1 then the javascript just shows 127.0.0.1. Seems to work.
What I dont get is why we need to be worried about cookies, IP address tracking and such. So what if I can figure out what IP you came from. That doesnt tell me your name or your home address. The only need for annoimity that I see would be if you are looking at things that are illegal, or you want to bypass your work/school firewall. Other than that.....why does it really matter?
Tracking your IP can help you and web developers. It tells them what is popular, where you came from, and how you went around in the site. It tells them if you even saw some of the pages and how you got to those pages. Ads specific to your IP are also better for advertisers. Tracking helps you by targeting information to you based on your activitys and this makes you happier. So Tracking is good
To me, one of the biggest threats to privacy is google's logging of what I search for. I tried using foxyproxy, but found it hard to find reliable and speedy proxy servers (which btw need to be in the US else google renders the version tailored for whatever country the ip address comes from). So my solution: I'm writing a little script that will periodically read random entries from a text file I have and submit a search to google for the data. For example, my data file contains "kill the president", "blowjobs from hookers", "boiling dead dogs", "where purchase drugs", "flowers for wifey", "plumbing supplies", etc. More sophisticated versions will include clicking on some of the links returned by google, and better combinatorics for the seach data. All I need do is make the fake google searches outnumber the real searches, and I've got plausible deniability on anything.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I don't think the author of the article has a handle on this whole privacy thing. People who care about privacy don't sign up for "loyalty" cards at grocery stores, don't give out their phone numbers to every retail clerk who asks for it, don't put their names in telephone directories, don't enter contests that require you to provide personal information on the entrance form
I could go on and on.
He laments the loss of "conveniences" such as not having to enter his username and password everytime he logs on to the Wall Street Journal online, or having Amazon recommend books to him based on his past purchases. If these things are more important to him than his privacy, that's his choice.
You have to determine what price would you pay to receive these services, then ask youself if that is a fair price for the data you are providing to the providers of these services, and anyone they choose to sell the data to in the future. I suspect that for the majority of people, the answer would - unfortunately - be yes.
I don't care why you're posting AC
I've been using FoxyProxy/Privoxy/Tor for a few months now. It wasn't nearly as difficult to set up as I'd imagined (I'm running Ubuntu), and it didn't degrade or slow down my web experience as much as I feared, either. It caused me an unexpected problem last week, though. I ordered some hardware from NewEgg. The process went exactly as usual and I got the confirmation e-mails as usual. The next day, however, I got another form e-mail that said my order had been cancelled because my bank was outside the United States. WTF, I thought - this is clearly not the case. I called NewEgg's support line and was told that it was actually *my* IP that appeared to be outside the US. I explained that I was using anonymizing software to protect my privacy online, but that I'd used my NewEgg account and completed the VerifiedByVISA process, and that I was shipping to a verified address, etc. The support guy said he couldn't un-cancel my order; I'd just have to re-order using "my real IP" this time. Fine, I grumbled. I went through the process again; when I supplied NewEgg's cart app with my account credentials this time, I was told that my account was suspended! I called NewEgg again; apparently my account was suspended because of the "suspicious transaction" referenced above. It took me a half hour to get my account reinstated.
I once experimented and added a machine to the Tor network as an exit point for web traffic.
A couple of hours later I wasn't welcome at slashdot any more. You can guess where that experiment ended.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
That's OK, provided you don't live in a country governed by a facist regime. In the UK, failure to disclose encryption keys to the police upon request can land you in prison, regardless of whether or not you've committed any other crimes.
Same thing happened to me with Wikipedia. Maybe you could try filtering the out traffic (don't allow connections to certain sites) if your server resides on the same IP address as you.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
in the first week i used tor my bank decided to shut me out of online banking for a week and paypal put me through a rigorous 'identity confirmation' protocol that included them depositing money in my cheuqing account, calling me at home and mailing (as in paper and stamps) a magic 5 digit code.
and i still use tor. every day.
because a police state is far less convenient.
2 1337 4 u!