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Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued
RobertB-DC writes "With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell's privacy blog. Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."
All they needed to do was connect to Internet2 and replace the ads on MySpace with their own and they would have been set...
-nick
... to say that this really sucks. I used Anonymizer all the time....
Shut down, closed source and windows only. It's a trifecta!
I have blocked anoymizer access to my BBS for several years. It was only used by abusive posters to block their identity.
With the other posts here about the FBI spyware, the possibility of government back doors in the various AV products, etc, maybe they decided to fold and close the doors instead of open mandated holes? Pure guessing but if the NSA/FBI/whoever went to them and said open this up for us, aplace like Anonymizer, founded on privacy, might not be able to be as morally flexible as the AV vendors who are looking for "viruses" and "spyware".
Pedophiles use the internet. You'd better get off the net, quick. You don't want to be associated with pedos, do you?
And your OS should have no firewall and share the root directory to the world by default.
After all, it's not like you're hiding kiddie porn on your hard drive, eh?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
The Internet is a tool. Just like cars are tools, guns are tools, and Zyklon-B is a chemical tool. Tools have no moral status; They do neither right nor wrong. What people do with tools is what is right or wrong.
The solution to terrorists and pedophiles abusing the 'Net is to hunt down and kill the terrorists and pedophiles, not harm the 'Net.
I for one welcome our new windows-only Anonymizer overlords.
Anyone relying on a one hop proxy to be anonymous is fooling themselves. You need an anonymity network that doesn't rely on trusting any host and that cannot be blocked without finding out who every host is. What if everyone who used anonymity services also provided such service? Think of how much better the whole system would work if it were p2p! Please install your tor server today.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
As we continue to beat a dead horse thanks to this karma-whoring flamebait.
One potential advantage is that I can't get TOR to work with the ISA proxy where I work. Proper configuration is scanty, and help resources have been non-existant. Perhaps this will work more easily in such a setup.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Absolutely! And we can thank George Bush for it!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
If they're anonymous, hunt them down how?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Fold and close the door? The summary says they are requiring the use of a client. From the sound of it, a proxy that funnels your traffic. Frankly I don't see how this would protect their customers. What it does do is exclude non-Windows users (their previous version provided a web-based service that only required a browser with SSL support).
If the NSA/FBI/etc wants to broker/enforce a court order/etc this does nothing to slow that down.
Quack, quack.
The law needs to be able to keep track of people that use the internet to harm others. The law (like religion and social taboos to a lesser extent) is necessary to protect regular people from the people that lack empathy. IMHO.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
There are many different proxies available at JTAN.
There are other tech forums, ya know.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I know this may be difficult to understand... but the internet CAN'T HARM ANYONE it's a bunch of interconnected computers... People on the other hand, can harm other people. People can use an item, be it the internet, a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, a stick, a heavy rock, a little rock, a bomb, a pen, a towel, a piece of rope, or a rotten egg to harm people... but the inanimate object can't harm someone.
Nephilium
As someone who actually paid money for the full Anonymizer service, I'm quite disappointed with the web interface going away and I have missed it dearly. The anonproxy.exe POS that they use crashes pretty much daily for me, something the web proxy never did. I'm upset that I've paid money for a service that lost a significant amount of its value after I purchased it.
YOU JUST WANT TO BE ANONYMOUS.
The flaw is that you're assuming that a desire to be anonymous means you have a REASON to be anonymous.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
We have not stopped providing privacy services. They are all now client based. It is the only way to ensure the security of our users. While the basic service is currently windows only (which is sad since I am a Mac person myself) our TNS product is completely functional from Mac or Linux (or Windows).
We are in no way downsizing our services. There were so few active users of our Private Surfing service, compared to our other services; it made no sense to try to keep a broken product limping along.
As far as security goes, since I see a few posts about that, it is simply a matter of personal choice. We deliver the best performance available. In almost 12 years of service no user has ever had his surfing activities compromised in any way. If we had some kind of law enforcement back door, it would hardly be a secret at this point. Alternatives require you to trust some exit point of unknown trustworthiness that may be actively modifying or monitoring content. There are advantages and disadvantages to all security models. In the real world and for most users, I think Anonymizer provides the best solution. Make up your own mind for your own circumstances.
You've never heard of skynet
I don't think it's a flaw to assume that people have reasons for wanting whatever it is they want.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Some "tools" are inherently immoral. Chemical weapons such as nerve agents strke me as a unambigious example since there is no legitimate use of these kind of weapons. A weapons grade ebola virus would be another example. If you can't do anything "right" with a so-called "tool" then the creation, use and even the existance of said "tool" are all "wrong".
Then you don't know people very well.
The "you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide" fallacy again?
0 54219
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/2
...all nations are restricted now, and all governments are in the big brother business. That's the overall general trend and it shows *no* signs of slowing down any.
If anyone doubts that, just think about a few things-are any nations going out of their way to pull monitoring cameras, or is the trend to keep installing more and more, even in the so called "free" nations? How about official eavesdropping and data retention laws for ISPs and so on? Are you feeling lucky with corporate data mining from anyplace, or are all of them complete fucktards about gobbling up all the data they can scrounge? And then "sharing" with the local regime/council/government/ruling class overlords? Are there any nations which haven't jumped on the "terrorism" bandwagon to excuse passing more restrictive laws and for increasing their so called "security" budgets?
The bottom line is, it doesn't matter where you live, if you aren't concerned over voicing your opinion, you aren't paying attention or you have a hidden suicidal death wish you are in psychological denial over or you have never read one history book.
Sure, a lot of places you still can talk or write-within some restrictions, but eventually your words may come back to haunt you.
You look back in history it's the same story over and over again, no matter how "cool" governments are, or started out as, no matter how "popular" with "the people", eventually ALL of them have gone through a dictatorial stage and either totally collapsed, or partially collapsed then went through a series of (usually worse) dictatorships. And, again speaking historically, events can change "your" local reality in the space of one day. One single day,. one event is all it takes to completely change things. Some archduke gets whacked. A big legislature building burns down, and a patsy is blamed for it. A very popular young president, then his brother, same thing, whacked, patsies picked up. Some planes hit some ships in a tropical island port. Some other planes hit some buildings. Some subway cars and buses explode. Some insane and too brave for reality idealist stands in front of a tank. A few colonels one night decide to "regime change" locally. A dictator gets sick, leaves the nation to get medical care, a firebrand cleric flies in and takes over. A ruler and his advisors decides to lie about attacks on destroyers, the big lie stands for fourty years.
And so on. Stuff happens. Politics is always chancy. And no, anyone "you", you don't live in a "free" country, although you might not live in one of the more restricted at this point in time countries. The *scale* is the only variable, and history shows us that variables are just that and can and often do change with no notice to you.
What you thought was safe and free political speech yesterday is now "terrorist hate speech" or some other boggey man phrase they come up with, and you're on the shitlist record for it. Several years ago did you donate some spare change, a few bucks, to some charity? Whoops, now you are on some watch list and could be arrested for aiding the enemy, whoops, merely "detained"...........
Reality is, politics and smugness shouldn't go together.
* Trolling a site where you've been banned time and again as a troublemaker.
I respect the higher motives of the folks behind TOR and the other anonymizers, but they are head-in-the-clouds idealists. Look at the FAQ for TOR. Try to find anything there that provides a realistic way to respond to abuse by pranksters and wanksters.
"Hack together a list of TOR exit routers and block them, if you can." Gee, thanks guys.
Oh, I have a reason to desire anonymity. I don't like George W. Bush. In today's climate, that's enough reason.
Say there is a sudden genetic mutation in monkeys. This mutation makes monkeys 1000% more intelligent and they become hell-bent on destroying the world, it also makes them stronger and more agile, they are also all totally insane(think orcs in Warhammer 40K). Would not a chemical or biological weapon be the tool be of use to rid the world of this menance?
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The problem is while agreeing wholly with your sentiment, in practice drawing the line is very hard. Weaponized forms of super-bugs I think is an unambiguous no-no, but *research* along that line is quite necessary, at the least so that someone has a chance of countering a bio-weapon when one is let loose. How do you loosen the cork without letting the genie out? Even relatively small labs now have the potential ability to create their own customized bugs and knowledge is in general circulation, so it is already too late to entirely prevent a future problem. Only mitigation is left.
It is unfortunate because, in many cases, I think we do need to put the breaks on a bit. Our track record with many kinds of meddling is poor, and we are doing so at an increasing rate; so quickly we cannot adequately measure effects to better target our meddling. In practice, however, stopping the train is not easy.
Political message: ok, I understand that if you're living in a restricted country.
A good percentage of the internet users & slashdot readers are
from the USA. So this is a very valid need what with the Patriot
Act, and all the other stuff which the Supreme Dictator has
changed.
anonymous is legion?
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter
"Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress)"
how can it be windows only if it doesn't support vista!?!?
shouldn't it be XP only then?
but k5 and digg suck so bad.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It seems intuitively absurd to think that people want things for literally no reason, because it seems intuitively absurd to think that anything happens for literally no reason. (That's not the same as people wanting things for bad reasons or unjustifiable reasons.) The right or wrong we can argue about, but it's certainly reasonable to think that.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I agree, Unipeak was used to post a threatening comment on my webpage about litigation I'm involved in, apparently by the other party in the lawsuit:
The details of multiple comments posted by Andrew Vilenchik anonymously are on my site, in many cases he used anoymizers (which I will probably start blocking, too).www.cgstock.com
Their traffic has been dropping for a while: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? url=anonymizer.com
Wow. It was just a question and a fairly harmless one at that. By the way, my sig was meant for folks like you. :D
And to think, YOU are the example of INSIGHTFUL. Way to set the bar pretty low. LOL.
Anyway. You have a reason to want privacy. Everyone does. Whether the reason is broad and abstract, such as a desire to relax in a safe space, or whether it's specific, such as fear of retribution, you still have a reason. If you don't have a reason, you're just a lowly animal getting by on stimulus/response.
You're probably a crow. Yea. That's fitting.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I live in China. I can't see bbc, wikipedia, or blogspot without proxies.
/my reasons good enough for you?
Why anonymous? See the first sentence of my post.
I consider that victory.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Dude, I know this is Slashdot, and that we can't expect anyone to RTFA, but at least read the comment you're replying to.
The relevant portion is: "keep track of people that use the internet to harm others".
Call me crazy, but I don't think pointing out that the internet can't hurt anyone is a valid response... cause, you know, he never said it could.
I don't even necessarily agree with the GP, but that was just lame.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
who's gonna anonymize the anonymous cowards? Will this mean I'll have to start posting under the username cowboy neal?
Camping on quad since 1996.
I'll call you the assumer. Since you can assume so much from such a simple question.
And to think I actually thought I might get some smart answers. Boy, was I wrong.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Closed source is like a box of chocolates - You don't know what you're gonna get...
Newsletter? Time for Gitmo for you!
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Here is a great reason for anonymity - if this had've been a real person, they would have been drafted, all for a simple free icecream cone: http://www.snopes.com/military/icecream.asp
"And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives." ... yea, like the advantage of getting the opportunity to figure out what someone else expects you to do in yet another complicated and confusing way. I mean really. I like open source stuff and all, but I waste so much time guessing at what settings are suppose to do what, or how to use the undefined API, or interpret the non-existant documentation.
Whoopie. Give me that nasty "closed" source stuff any day.
Maybe you are so completely ignorant of the debate that your post really was credulous. In which case instead of lashing out at the people criticizing you, you would do well to understand WHY they are criticizing you. In short, what you wrote and particularly the WAY you wrote it is very trollish to anyone who has seen this topic of discussion more than once or twice.
When in Rome does as the Romans do. You haven't followed that precept and now you are mad at the Romans who think you are being rude.
Anonymizer had too many restrictions on which sites you could browse.
We've had better web proxy alternatives with fewer restrictions for years... BlastProxy and ProxyStorm are two web based anonymous proxies that I often use.
Other networks, such as Tor allow users, who are willing to install additional software components, browse anonymously. Although, nothing really beats the convienence of the web proxies!
thanks.
Spielberg's Law: If your hypothetical armageddon scenario would be rejected by a typical Hollywood director as being too stupid to be believable, it cannot be used to make an argument in a political discussion.
IANAL, I'm just asking...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It's too bad you were modded down, as you have a really good question. "Why do we need privacy?" is worth asking.
All of the reasons you listed were good ones, but I think the biggest reason I want privacy is that it gives me peace of mind. I can say whatever I want without having to worry about whether my thoughts are going to be tied back to me and follow me around for the rest of my life. Slashdot comments are forever, and I don't want my reputation on the line for every stupid Slashdot comment I make and every Web page I visit. I can express my honest opinion without worrying about political correctness or my relationships with other people or implications for my career. I don't have to worry about whether someone in IT noticed that Google search for "guns" the other day, or if they're going to take it the wrong way.
Slashdotters talk about the FBI watching you or the PATRIOT act or whatever, but I think the biggest threat from eavesdroppers comes from people you know -- people who might even mean well. It comes from family, from the boss, from friends (especially girlfriends and ex-girlfriends), from the gossipy co-worker down the hall, and so on. We do need privacy politically, but I think day-to-day privacy is ultimately more important.
The criticism was simply the easier way out. Providing what I wanted was a lot more difficult. When in doubt.. SHRIEK!
You mean the WAY in which you READ it. There was no connotation in my question. Only the pessimistic one in your head. Get a grip... paranoid boy. (Afraid to sully your real account.. eh?)
It is YOU who is the troll. Trolls want you to react. I wanted you to respond.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Camping on quad since 1996.
You also could cause yourself to fall under moral discrimination if your boss knew your interests without your providing them. Boss = anti-abortion, You = pro-abortion, and after searching for an abortion clinic, your progress reports mysteriously tank and you have no idea why. You could also run into problems if your boss knew you were searching Monster for "unix+system+administrator", which coincidently is your job title.
Camping on quad since 1996.
WARNING:
Your post may be an attempt to perhaps conspire to the eventuality that you might have thought about mentioning Iraq as something else than "A Glorious Work by our Savior"(tm).
Please hand over all your assets and report to Gitmo.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" is a nice saying, but if you can't think of any way to hurt someone except bodily harm you can't be thinking very far.
To think of a few:
1) All sort of lies, scams, frauds to steal your money like stock scams, 411 scams etc.
2) Post private information like your medical record, stolen sex pics with your wife (or not) etc.
3) Post lies, threats, harassment like threats to kill you, post pictures of your kids with name and address and an invitation for pedos to have a a go etc.
4) Photoshop you into some "interesting" pictures enough to pass basic checks and land you in a world of hurt before it is discovered.
5) Use the anonymity to hack your computer and fill it with all sort of compromising material, clean it up so the hack can't be traced and report you
6) Steal your onlien banking info and move all your funds to an account in Ukraine or whereever, which will be empty in a day and the money never seen again.
I'm sure I could make that list several pages long if you gave enough time. The Internet can be used to do very real non-bodily harm, and you'd be a fool to think otherwise.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It might be right to kill people under certain circumstances. For example, play with a fake situation that you are standing next to a group of terrorists who are busy making child porn and then killing the children. Your only weapon is a canister of weapons grade ebola virus. Would it be wrong to use the ebola to kill the terrorists? I think it would be better to kill the terrorists.
Most weapons are meant to kill people. We need to morally justify each and every kill, and it doesn't depend on the type of tool used to kill.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
Erm, I feel somewhat bad about saying this - but isn't people fully aware that using a commercial anonymising service simply means that your IP address is not visible to the end recipient, while every move you make is still logged and available to the police if required?
Try sending a dirty bomb threat using "Web Anonymiser v3.0" or even share child porn and laugh all the way to jail.
in democracies it is the people who elect their assholes. Don't blame Bush and his gang, blame the idiot US citizens who voted for him. And do not give me that argument about "restricted choice". It is also the idiots, ultimately, that are responsible for the choice because they have directly or indirectly voted for people who made the rules.
Granted, at some point a popular asshole might change your democracy back to dictatorship or at least autocracy, but still, blame your idiot fellow citizens for that.
And of course, this applies to all other democracies. No one forced the Italians to vote for the asshole Berlusconi, they did it out of their own dumb will.
Thanks for the clear and honest explanation.
Did I really just read on
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
So, what do you want, a fucking medal? Aren't you just the saviour putting their head above the parapet. Look, buddy. I don't care. There's plenty of shit on this side of the fence, I assure you. Most of what you see is commercial bullshit. For all the wealth and freedom there's plenty of people living in poverty and suffering from bad government. The West just hides it better. It's what some people call a con.
Read the Tao, marry a girl and have your one child family, and kiss Chairman Moa's ass and thank the Communist party for keeping you free of swindlers and liars. You think you're fucking special? You're not. Things are as they are. It could be no other way. You want more? You want freedom? Or is it that you're just another whiny selfish bastard who can't deal with reality? No, don't tell me. I already know the answer to that one.
It would NOT be better to kill the terrorists, because if I was "standing next to" them, the ebola virus would kill me too.
Part of freedom is not having to justify everything you want to with a reason.
I'll be found out for sure now.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
It reminds me of a trip to Dominican Republic I made a few years ago. The travel agent told me that walkie-talkies were illegal in this country. Being a libertarian, I brought them anyway (If a law annoys me I simply ignore it) and a couples day into the trip, I saw two big military trucks patrolling in front of the hotel. I closed my walkie-talkie and put it in my pocket, but I always wondered if that was just a coincidence or if they were looking for the "insurgents" that were using "illegal" walkie-talkies.
This was the year when they had lots of riots in Santo-Domingo, so the army might have been on their toes looking for "insurgents."
"With ... no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service"
No outcry?! A private company makes decisions well within its rights, and there's no outcry!? Wow, I almost feel young again.*
* If you're not "old", please ignore this seemingly incoherent post.**
** By "old", I mean, like, mid 30's and up.
There are some pretty heavy issue of personal freedom and personal responsibility at play here. Hard and fast rules in cases of social mores, non-destructive personal freedoms and the protection of personal property tend not to work on global scales. This (the conglomeration of human societies) is such a varied and multifaceted that I understand reactions such as this laundry list can be a very effective tool in convincing others that "more laws", "more control", "more police action", "more vigilance" is "required." The world can be a very scary place, and you might get some stuff taken from you that you didn't want taken away. People might find out things about you that you don't want them to find out. Stuff happens. It's OK. Take a deep breath. Now think about the fact that governments don't unmake laws. Governments don't give up power. In an environment like the internet any and all mechanisms that can be put into place that will override the powers of government and place it back into the hands of the people are good things. People don't wage wars on things, or ideas, or nations, or peoples...governments do. And once you come to be on the wrong side of that government's war, then you will value your options to retain your civil liberties. Services like tor and this Anonymizer product protect all, equally. Both the "good" and the "bad" can reap rewards from systems like these.
Please, don't give up my freedoms to ease your fears.
Ridiculous!
"all telephone calls will also require biometric authentication"
This is pointless unless we also require long term retention policies. One year of recordings of all calls should suffice.
"Historically, many annonymous notes have been written on paper. We must institute a new system where paper is only available to authorised government agents; illegial possession of paper is also grounds for shippment to Gitmo."
This should not be necessary. It should suffice to put a code on the paper to indicate it's source. Something like yellow dots that would not be noticed by the paper users. Of course if we could require all paper to be registered at time of purchase, it would be helpful. We could use a secure method for identifying people. Might I suggest a 9 digit numbering system that the federal government can issue.
I think it is a flaw to think that people know what those reasons are. We are, much more than we like to believe or admit, driven by fairly primitive instincts. Check out the studies showing the relative importance of politicians facial features and their policies for one example. If your primitive monkey brain says something is good (taking a drug, hiring the better-looking but less-qualified job applicant, being anonymous...) you will have a desire to do it, but your rational brain may not know why.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I tried, really I did, but I just can't drive that badly.
... by open wireless access points!
And the kids
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Why do you need an anonymizer? Just curious.
All I can think of is...
* Whistle blowing: but, that could be done by pay phone or snail mail
* Police informant: but, that would be abused by false reports, plus police usually have less faith in anonymous reports, although anonymous child abuse reports are taken seriously
* Political message: ok, I understand that if you're living in a restricted country.
* Embarrassing stuff: sex diseases, sexual assault support, teen pregnancy, GLBT
* Illegal stuff: lots of potential for that
OK. So, do any of you have any reasons not on my list?
Well, here's a very good one off the top of my head: current/potential employer snooping.
It seems to be a growing trend for employers to check up on employees and applicants by doing searches on the web. I can imagine all sorts of scenarios where one might not want to have things one might voice on the web to be tied back to you by a current or future employer. Insurers might be another, considering current trends.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
How about mere unprofessional behavior? With the number of employers doing background checks for decent jobs, and googles all-seeing eye, it's rather nice to be able to drop back to a nym rather then a name. It also helps when my real name only shows up on technical mailing lists, and I have other nyms for other activities.
Yeah, it's not illegal to talk about dragging an entire cooler of booze to the beach and throwing an all-day party where we're blitzed out of our minds, but that's not how I like to be defined on google. The way pagerank worked, cool parties and other hobbies get linked to a hell of a lot more then archived mailing list posts discussing DMA timeouts on specific PCI busses.
So, should I be required to make a report of everything I've ever done in my entire life and let people pour over it? Or can I take a shit in private sometimes?
"And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."
Oh, is that what closed-source means?
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
good things must be ended
http://brain.com/
although you make an excellent case, it doesn't matter. You see, we're americans, we just don't care! No really! September what you say? 9/11? That was a movie, right?
We don't care about YOUR problems, we care about not being able to carry a gun on our hip. So what if your inconvenienced! I don't live there!
But seriously, many people, not just americans make these crazy assumptions so readily without knowing ANY facts. Security and anonymity are important, necessary and good/bad. This reminds me of Socrates and "virtue." Anyhow, it sucks that yet another great net asset is lost. The only other anon network that i remember having ended pretty bad was triangle boy. Supposedly it helped a lot in china, right?
And for that anonymous poster, dam, all i can say is i can't believe what you said/think.
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
It's official, the only people left in America who approve of the President have him confused with someone else.
Why do you find the two statements for some reason irreconcilable?