Slashdot Mirror
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.
That doesn't allow you to see ComputerWorld sites?
What I need is a meta-surfer, a free port 80 VPN with a built in browser on the client side....maybe one day I'll build one myself.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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. Tried configuring Tor to encrypt and hide my queries before the ISA proxy ever saw them, but never could figure out how to get FireFox to work with it, nor find any Tor help sites or discussion groups for what should be a simple enough question.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Seems to me like proxy servers just replace Big Brother knowing everything you do with some tiny "anonymous browsing" site. And you are willfully giving them all this information to boot, so if they decide to turn over all their logs there isn't a thing you could do.
It is illegal for a library to keep a record of the books you have checked out after they're returned.
It should also be illegal for your ISP to record your browsing history.
It's about privacy and freedom.
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." ---
Anyone who has ever needed this capability already knew how to do it. The article will undoubtedly lead to many "normal" users trying it out and inevitably deciding it is a waste of time. The majority of proxy servers are as slow as molasses since the adult site crackers are running all their scripts through them. You have to be pretty dedicated to actually use these servers on a regular basis.
That's it? Use a proxy? Who here didn't already know that?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Yes, defending your own brand of craziness from the craziness of others is sometimes important, and for that reason and many others, anonymity can be very important in a civilized society. But I think it is somewhat overused on the internet.
The other half of the anonymity consideration though is that when everyone gets used to only having 'full' freedom when cloaked from the sight of others, they begin to accept a greater lack of freedom in their 'real' lives. That's why I don't choose anonymity whenever I can - I want my mistakes to be my own, and when I discuss, for instance, digital freedoms, I don't want to hide behind the ubiquitous pseudonyms we've all grown so used to while doing so.
I don't want to 'get away' with looking into for 'bad things' - I want REAL people to be free to do what they want. Of course, I, like everyone else, have some things I'm not going to disclose, and would like to have anonymity available - but I'd much rather push for less need to hide things, rather than disappear behind a fake name most of my online life.
Ryan Fenton
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
OK, use a laptop. Connect to an open AP. Then log on to someone else's server with open telnet port. From there use a script with elinks/lynx/wget so that all requests for web content are made to Google's cache. I think this is reasonably safe.
Seems like a great front for a Man in The Middle attack, except that rather then setting up tons of fake ARP packets you get people to come to your site. Brilliant! Why not just use the coffee shop in the town next to you, and reprogram your MAC address to.
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.
/. to act very strangely for the last few minutes.)
Ironic, particularly since you're writing under a pseudonym. Or is "TheRecklessWanderer" what it says on your birth certificate? I didn't think so.
Anonymous systems are needed to combat the ease with which modern technology would allow someone to compile a dossier on another person's entire life and activities -- an ability which was never present in the past.
In the pre-computer (or at least, pre-networked-computers) era, it was fairly safe to use your real name everywhere, because it would take an immense amount of effort for someone else to go around and link together all the various activities you were doing under that name. If the fellow behind the counter at the grocery store knew your name, and you also used your name when you were at your local religious group's meeting, it didn't matter, because there was no connection between the two. Short of following you around town and then asking everyone, using your real name didn't mean giving anything up.
However, today, using your real name everywhere creates a near-unique primary key that someone else could easily use to search, and find out everything about you. To continue the example from above, they could simply run a search on your name, and with far less effort than following you around, find out everything they wanted to know about you, because virtually everything is online, and the indexes are only getting more and more complete.
Online anonymity systems aren't borne out of a desire to have more anonymity than we used to have, they're -- for many people, anyway -- an attempt to recapture the way things were, before it was possible to assemble a dossier about anyone else, just by Googling their name.
I don't think there's any reason why the people reading what I write on Slashdot, need to know who I am in real life. Likewise, I wouldn't go around advertising where I go to church to everyone in the grocery store. It's just not relevant to my interaction with them. They don't need to know. If they do, they could ask, and I could tell them, but that's none of their business, frankly. Anonymity and pseudonymity are simply attempts to not allow the traditional compartmentalization of our lives to be completely undone via massive searchable indexes and databases.
(Apologies if this got posted twice -- something has been causing
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I wrote up a very simple set of step-by-step instructions entitled "How to be Anonymous on the World Wide Web Using Windows"
1st: Throughout history, there have been wonderfull governments, but also some horrible governments. And even the Wonderfull Governments often keep records, that get passed on to their replacement, horrible governments when the evil SOB's have revolution. Governments have in the past killed people for: Being Jewish. Being Gay. Belonging to a political party that objected to that government. Asking if the government had killed other people. Being a family member of any of the above people. Looking at Pornography. While I trust (just barely) the current government, I do not trust the unknown government that will take power in 4 years, because I don't know who they are yet.
2nd: If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph - so I can show it to your neighbors?
Because THAT is what you are saying. You DO have things you do not want people to see. So do I. Yours might be your pretty body. Mine might be the fact that I am gay. And a member of the legalize marijuana political action group. And a member of the "Send the Africans back to Africa" Charity. Also, I routinely travel 56 mph in a 55 mph zone. And get drunk 1/month in my closet. And I once masturbated while looking at pictures of dead dogs. And I collect my own snot and eat it. I still wet my bed. I won't do business with those dirty, thieving Jews. And I am a card carrying member of the ACLU. And I despise children. All of these things are legal (or at least not serious crimes worthy of being investigated). Now, assuming I was not being sarcastic, do you think I would have a job tomorrow if my boss knew them?
3rd consider this: I have a right to privacy, not because I have things to hide, but because trust is a two way street. Think about a parent. What would you think of a father that says "My honor student has never done anything wrong. But just to be 'sure', I hired a private investigator to follow them around all the time, sneak into his bedroom at night and check his computer, diary, underwear draw" It takes WAY too much effort and cost for the government to actually fairly investigate everyone. So we tell them that if they want to investigate people, they must prove it to a judge that they are worth investigating. If the cop can't do that, then THE COPS ARE THE SICKO PERVERTS. Just like the dad/mom that treated their honor student like a gangbanger, if the government does the same to us, THEY demonstrate that they are A) poor government, B) can't be trusted themselves and C) have serious emotional problems.
4th: The last, best argument is simple. Every test has a false positive rate as well as a false negative rate. If you test too many people, you end up convicting the innocent more than the guilty. I.E. if you have a test that 5% of the time falsely says "drug user" even if they are not, and use it on a population where only 1% of the people use drugs, than you arrest, charge and try 5 innocent people for every 1 guilty. Those innocent had nothing to hide. Hackers break into your computer, zombifie it and use it to store child porn. You don't know about this, till the police track down your computer as the server for a child porn ring, break down your door and arrest you. (Several cases like this exist).
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I wonder if anyone has a script that would automatically change your reported MAC address to a random (but valid) value, every 24 hours or so, or when the DHCP releases and renews.
Doesn't seem like it would really be all that hard on a Linux/BSD system, no idea what it requires on Windows to script that sort of thing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
However, more fundamentally, the answer is: it does not matter. I am innocent until proven guilty.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
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 only time the average user would need to surf anonymous is when he/she knows he is doing something wrong.
What about someone doing a search about a medical problem or depression?
What about political dissent?
What about searching for a new job?
What about a whistleblower going to a Gov website to report abuse of gov contracts?
etc...
I'm not sure what the FBI would do with all of my private e-mail, but if being reminded to pick up milk on the way home from work is a crime, I should be on death row by now.
Unfortunately, you don't have any rights to privacy in the US. This is a common misconception.
You're quite wrong I'm glad to say. As early as the early 1800s the US Supreme Court ruled anonymousity was an important part of the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech. The ruling said that if a person could not remain anonymous then they could not enjoy freed political speech, that if they had to watch their words then they wouldn't speak out. Denying anonymousity is a powerful tool for authoritarian regimes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
and the only time the average user would need to surf anonymous is when he/she knows he is doing something wrong. I mean, i'm not trying to start anything here, but rather understand WHY you would need to do this.
BS! Something does not need to be bad to a reason to remain anonymous. Politics and political speech are very good reasons to be anonymous. If someone can't remain anonymous then they can't enjoy free political speech.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
For illustration, imagine yourself going through life with your name, address, and phone number, along with a map to your home with careful directions as to how to get there, printed on a t-shirt you must wear for all to see. And to top it off, anyone who looks at the shirt can access records about where you've been, what you've read, who you talk to, along with careful timestamps on all these items.
Would you be confortable with that? Are you so free of enemies or sure of the people who watch you that you'd wear that shirt? Or would you rather just walk around without that highly informative piece of clothing, as free men have always done?
I'm not arguing that it should necessarily be impossible for authorities, duly authorized, to monitor someone's communications; there is a legitimate, although very limited, need for that. However, nowhere is it written that we ought to make that terrifically easy, which is what abolishing anonymity and pseudonymity online would amount to.
Here in the U.S. anyway, we have a strong (and historically, well-justified) distrust of government. They have a job to do, but they have to conform and find ways to do their job, within the greater framework of civil society: civil society doesn't, and shouldn't, bend itself around backwards to make it easy for the authorities to do their job. After all, it would probably make life a whole lot easier for the police if we all had identification numbers tattooed on our foreheads, but I don't think anyone thinks that's a great idea.
When the cops have a reason to search your house, they come to your door (after getting a warrant and all other necessary authorizations), and -- if you're not there -- they break the door down with a battering ram. They don't mandate that everyone has to have locks made out of balsa wood, so they the doors are easy to kick down; they use a big iron pipe filled with cement. If you have a safe that they need to get inside, they hire safecrackers to open it up -- they don't ban safes. This necessarily implies that there is, at times, a bit of an 'arms race' between criminals and the police, but this is not always a bad thing. There would be obvious negative consequences of simply mandating things in order to make the authorities' lives easier (e.g. balsa wood locks or plywood safes).
However, this understanding seems to have gotten lost somewhere around the introduction of computers. Now, rather than providing legitimate authorities with the time and equipment necessary to do their jobs correctly within a technologically advanced society, certain politicians and civil authorities have seen fit to try and re-jigger society in order to make it easier on them. Let there be no doubt: this is a destructive shortcut, and it's no better than saying that everyone has to have balsa-wood locks, or drop off a copy of their keys at the local precinct house, in case the police ever need to get in and have a look around. We don't do that, because it would be a vast invitation to abuse, and giving them the ability to tap a few keys and find out everything about what you do online would be no better.
There are reasons why the authorities have certain extraordinary powers, but also reasons why those powers are limited in scope, and are not supposed to be trivially easy to exercise.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Thanks for the tip, AC.
Why that's not set to "true" by default in Firefox just boggles the mind. If someone's using a proxy, it seems reasonable to assume that they probably want all of their web-browsing-related traffic proxied. A situation where someone wanted only the HTTP content proxied, but not the DNS resolves, seems like an exception to the rule, where the person could go twiddle preferences -- why they would make the default configuration something that's insecure and potentially dangerous, makes no sense to me.
I'd also note for the record, that at least according to the EFF documentation, Firefox's socks_remote_dns setting may not be trustworthy.
http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/To
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."