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Do You Need to Surf Anonymously?
An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld has up an article entitled 'How to Surf Anonymously without a Trace'. It purports to offer tips on how to avoid detection by anyone attempting to monitor your internet access. 'If you don't like the limitations imposed on you by [proxy] sites like the Cloak or would simply prefer to configure anonymous surfing yourself, you can easily set up your browser to use an anonymous proxy server to sit between you and the sites you visit. To use an anonymous proxy server with your browser, first find an anonymous proxy server. Hundreds of free, public proxy servers are available, but many frequently go offline or are very slow. Many sites compile lists of these proxy servers, including Public Proxy Servers and the Atom InterSoft proxy server list.'"
Do you know who owns it? Do you know what kind of logs they keep? Do you know who else reads their logs? Seems to me like a terribly good way to fish for undesireables would be to setup an "anonymous" proxy and wait for people to start using it. I mean, its not like police go out and pretend to be hookers to catch 'johns', or pretend to be dealers to catch users, or even pretend to be young children to catch pedophiles. If you don't own it, you can't trust it, and if you do own it then its not terribly anonymous. Even the whole onion router business has come into question as of late.
Not a whole lot of anonymous anything left on the internet these days with all the data mining that goes on. The best you can do is leech wireless and pretend to be someone else.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Meh. There are enough good alternatives: TOR, I2P Freenet (if they ever make a useful thing out of it, because after more then 5 years development, they fall kinda short. Maybe things will get better with their Openet, though - but when will that happen?).
Anyway, public proxies are only haphazard and temporary solutions, and not very good ones at that. First of all, they're often unreachable, unusable or slow. Secondly, you never know WHICH proxy you actually use; I mean; who owns the damn thing? What does he log?
Ofcourse, with enough proxies to choose from, and trying out at randomn, it may be a small chance that you end up with someone that actually makes your privacy more in danger, but still... The systems mentionned above (include JAP to that) are much safer for anonymous browsing.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
you claim It is illegal for a library to keep a record of the books you have checked out after they're returned
r ecords
I say, you should be right, but you are completely wrong.
try this http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fbi+library+
so, if you have a citation to back up your assertion, please, supply the citation.
I say, you are flat out wrong.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Here's how: google for 'nph-proxy.cgi' and then find one that uses https. Your employer will only see an ssl connection being made to the same server over and over.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I wrote up a very simple set of step-by-step instructions entitled "How to be Anonymous on the World Wide Web Using Windows"
Check Peacefire. Every week or so on the mailing list they announce a new web-based proxy. The current one is StupidCensorship.com. The code is available so you can run your own "proxy."
Still, your employer probably keeps logs. If you really must visit sites that you don't want your employer to know about (ie, jobsearch), do it sparingly or just wait until you get home. You could also set up OpenVPN and run that over a proxy server and browse from your home network.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Most libraries in the US make it a point to get rid of any data linking a book to a patron once the book's returned, especially since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act (which requires them to turn over such data to the government if they're asked for it, but doesn't require them to actually keep the data in the first place). However, I'm not aware of any state that actually makes it illegal to keep such data. I've got tens of thousands of old books with cards listing everyone who checked them out within a certain time period, before there were computers to track such things, and it's certainly not illegal to have these. The law in my state does make it illegal to turn over these records to anyone who doesn't have a court order to see them, but just keeping them isn't illegal. In fact, I'd say the Justice Department would probably like it very much if it was actually required to keep the records forever. Or, you know, turn them over to be put in a federal database every time a book is checked out, so they could do some datamining to find potential terrorists.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Why do people do things anonymously that they wouldn't do if their name was stamped on it? I think the world would be a lot better place if everyone took responsibility for what they said and what they did.
I don't know about you but I don't want any government tracking me or monitoring what I say or where I go, online or offline. If a person is concerned about who's taking note of what they say then they won't exercise political speech freely.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The question is, how does one surf anonymously at work when you're forced to use your employer's proxy to get through the firewall.
Ssh into your box at home and use freenx (or regular x-forwarding if your latency is low enough). Then just use it as if you were browsing at home.
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