Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Choosing Anonymous Proxies?
bradley13 writes "There are lots of anonymous proxies out there, and anyone concerned about their privacy probably uses one for at least some of their web browsing. The Megaupload story highlights the fact that having servers in the USA is not a great idea. There are also other countries one may not want to trust. Oddly, very few proxy services mention where their equipment is located. What anonymous proxy services do you use? What criteria do you use to select them? How paranoid are you, and for what types of Internet usage?"
It's the only way to stay truly anonymous and secure on the internet. You cannot trust companies to provide you true anonymity and proxies, especially if money is involved.
Never trust anyone, and never expose to anyone who you are. That is the only way to stay secure on the internet.
I use this thing.
Selection criteria:
1. First google hit for [anonymous proxy]
2. It's been around since forever and I remember its url (but when I don't, see #1)
Yeah, not that scientific.
The most venerable lineage in this space is probably The Anonymizer, which was once hosted by CMU researchers, but it seems to have been bought and turned into a commercial desktop application.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's easy, free, and for the most part anonymous if all you are doing is simple web browsing.
Not sure that I would want to do any banking or accessing sensitive data through that network, but it is a start.
See: http://xkcd.com/908/
Except it's all pointing to one gnarly Tor endpoint
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It is fine for most purposes, and if you are really worried about backtracking, login from an open WiFi, route through TOR out the exit node and through one or two of the numerous free online proxies. Slow as molasses in January, but there it is.
Many TOR nodes are run for malicious purposes (a few have resorted to 'wall of sheep' sort of tactics' to reinforce this fact). TOR gives you anonymity but NOT privacy.
I use Giganews' 'VyperVPN service. They have servers all over the world and you can select which country you want to use.
I've also used privatetunnels.com which is based in the Ukraine and that was a great service as well.
I do not trust Anonymous proxies. So I always host my own "anonymous" proxies myself. That is what I call secure!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I use Overplay for region-restricted web content. Very useful when watching British TV shows on the BBC iPlayer and Irish Gaelic sports like hurling and Gaelic football which saves me the trouble of having to go to a pub and pay $20 per game.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Google for "vpn services accepting bitcoin". Done. We learned from the spectacular failure of HideMyAss that you cannot pay for you proxy with credit card when the FBI comes looking.
I personally use open wifi connections, they are about as anonymous as you can get. I picked up a 10" google pad with GPS, installed the software and took a drive. They are all over the place, that is assuming you dont use the open one at the local bar, Denny's, McDonalds, Cigar club, Starbucks, etc, etc, etc.
If you look, you will find that open and available wifi connections are easy to find, completely anonymous, and fun. Fun because it is amazing what people will share on there local network with an open wifi connection ;)
It's never been a problem. Ditto for lots of other people and companies. What's the issue?
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
How about a coffee shop's free Wifi using a spoofed MAC address while I'm sitting at the restaurant next door?
What degree of anonymity are you looking for? Exactly which of the HTTP request headers do you wish to be anonymized? Okay so your proxy is not passing on your IP address. So It's not passing on common proxy behaviours (like HTTP 1.0 requests). And there's no 'proxy' anywhere in the request. You're not even using TOR. Well done. Now check Panopticlick. You're not anonymous. Now exactly what kind of proxy where you looking for and what kind of anonymity were you looking for?
.
"Inside Cocoon we do not track where you go or what you do online... Only operational information, such as processing speed or what features are under greatest demand, may be used to ensure Cocoon provides the best possible performance and experience to our users."
There is the question of how enforceable this promise is, since Cocoon is ad-supported. It's in their privacy policy, however, so I presume that is legally binding on them. I like that Cocoon comes right out and say that they don't track anything, though. Does any other proxy do that?
Like always, the question you have to ask is "who am I hiding it from"?
.. so unless your transport itself is encrypted, it's game over if the exit op is malicious.
TOR works well, but is neither anonymous or private (meaning TOR traffic is easy to identify at entry, so the ISP will know you're doing it). At exit, the traffic is the same as it entered
Paid proxies are good for casual "don't want the boss seeing it", and many of these are plain HTTPS so they're harder to spot. Teathering your personal phone also works here.
If you're doing something illegal, the safest bet is probably long-range wifi (to somebody else's equipment) + proxy (tor, VPS with stolen CC, etc.) and even then you've got to move around a bit.
of thwarting FBI requests: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/exclusive-how-the-fbi-investigates-the-activities-of-anonymous.ars
Let me point out the elephant is in the room.
How do you verify the anonymity?
I find being offended by me offensive.
I completely respect people's privacy, but when they insist on SO MUCH and total privacy, it even makes me wonder what they're up to. Personally, I use the "do not track" feature on firefox, which is probably useless and per the WSJ article on privacy, I added the Ghostery and Better Privacy add-ons to Firefox...they're supposed to further help. I'm not sure what I'd be doing to require a botnet or a truly anonymous proxy. Even when I thought about growing my own pot, I just used my regular browser and emailed friends about it over gmail. Probably not real bright. I'd like to know what you're all up to that requires such anonymity.
http://www.hideipvpn.com/ has servers in the US & UK; I use them once in a while if I want to access region specific content. Pretty cheap and fast enough for my needs so I'm happy.
https://getfoxyproxy.org/proxyservice/
Many people will post suggestions for incredibly difficult to implement solutions. I work with groups of people (journalists, mostly) which need something NOW, that they can run themselves without getting a degree in network engineering.
For them, I send them to AnchorFree Hotspot Shield.
Free, ad supported (you can run AdBlockPlus) and allegedly does not log for non-paying accounts (I wouldn't want to know either). It gives you a random IP address terminating in Northern California, which is very helpful for people with censorship issues.
Being paranoid, I cannot resolve the chain-of-trust for anonymous proxies. For all I know Big Brother, with his infinite budget, owns and operates all of these so called proxies anyway. Honeypots if you will. Not only are they well-positioned to see what you are trying to conceal but even collaborate among other owned nodes to see just how far you're willing to take it. So in the worst case you are drawing even more attention upon yourself. You cannot really know. Is it safer than not using a proxy at all? Possibly.
IPpredator.se and anonine.se. Both from the freedom loving land of Sweden. You get SSL and PPTP with 2048kb or 128kb encryption (IPredator supports PPTP only IIRC).
http://prq.se/?p=tunnel&intl=1
PRQ is based in Sweden, and has their own ASN (read: they are their own network, connected to multiple upstream backbones)
They offer all types of services in addition to VPNs: colo, dedicated hosting, and shared hosting.
Their tunnels offer a static IP and no ports blocked (for running servers if that's your thing), so you'll want to provide your own firewalling. They use straight OpenVPN too.
They have a strict privacy policy and appear to follow it.
This is the same ISP that hosts the pirate bay too, which should give you an idea how they handle requests from certain other countries due to the whining of certain media cartels...
I've been a customer for awhile now and quite happy.
I am even planning to colo with them in the next couple of months if all goes well. (Previous data center I've been with has changed company names like three times now in the past six months, and now plans to jack their pricing up)
1) Log on using someone else's credentials (someone you don't like).
2) Generate a file of random bytes.
3) Post it to a file sharing site through the proxy with an annotation that these are the final plans for World Jihad. Append "Allahu Akbar" for good measure.
4) See if the person who'd credentials you borrowed is dragged off to Gitmo.
Have gnu, will travel.
Think what you could do with an unlimited budget and sufficient taps of peering and backbone links. Now add in CALEA backdoors with poor security, and think about how these scale. Now think about how anonymizers work. Now read up on traffic analysis. Don tin foil hat...
IF you're really serious about security the best way is to find a non-logging vpn service, preferably one that's encrypted. US based companies are legally required to keep logs on their us based servers. Best bet is a sweedish server. It's not 100% but still much better than most options.
When it really matters, and you don't want to rely on an open WiFi connection being available.
* Netbook/Laptop
* Fresh install of any convenient OS. Bonus for booting from USB.
* 3G USB modem - buy with cash.
* Prepaid 3G SIM chip - buy with cash.
* Voucher for prepaid SIM chip - buy with cash.
If it really matters, destroy the SIM chip and 3G modem when done.
Consider the possibility that you were recorded on CCTV when buying the SIM chip, the 3G modem, the voucher.
The chance that the Powers That Be will trace the these to a given retail outlet and search back for CCTV is probably small, but if it matters enough, take appropriate steps - something simple might be OK, like wearing a Guy Fawkes mask while doing the shopping.
Buy your modem, simchip long before you need to use them. Top-up vouchers have a limited life, but are available everywhere. Choose somewhere without CCTV for buying this.
Just so you know, some of these file sharing services block IPs coming from well known (often commercial) proxies. There are, of course, other sites that block IPs from proxies too which may or may not adversely affect your Internet experience while using said proxy.
The main reason to use a proxy when doing things like file sharing is to avoid detection by your ISP. Some ISPs are quite nosy and will block you from file sharing sites especially if they notice you are consuming "too much" bandwidth transferring data from those sites. In cases where your ISP is the only broadband game in town you may want to add an extra layer in between what you are doing online and the ISP and a proxy can be useful to that end. When the copyright owner complains they will complain to the operator of the proxy which then may terminate your (proxy) service but hopefully your ISP is kept out of the loop.
I would never trust a proxy to make me completely anonymous no matter where it was physically located. If you commit a serious enough crime no proxy will protect you.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Pay for a proxy, but use a prepaid visa that is not registered in your name (hard to od but not impossible) then NEVER connect to that proxy from the same starbucks, mcdonalds, etc...
Yes this means you have to use hacker tactics for not getting caught. That is the price for living in a oppressive country.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The condos I used to live in came with free cable and Internet. When I called TWC to ask how to connect to the Internet, they told me to use the cable modem that was installed. When I said there was none, and after two weeks screwing around on the phone, I went into the local office, and asked there. She went through the billing, and found the old modem, and called someone and told them the old numbers, and gave me a new one. When I asked if they were using that modem to get free Internet at a different location, she laughed and said only for about 5 years now, but that will stop soon, as soon as they located which house it was in!
Cheers
There are literally hundreds of anonymous proxy services for all kinds of situations. In the past I've used these:
Anonymous proxies
IPFreely Proxies
A private VPN might be more up your street though, depending on what exactly you're protecting, but the services will depend on where you live.
http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Solves both problems. And you don't have to trust any one company, or result to illegal tactics like bot nets.
Its really about time everyone moves over to it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I live next door to CowboyNeal and use his unprotected wifi.
Is you do not talk about proxies! Seriously though, anyone who is halfway serious about their privacy isn't going to post details of how they retain their anonymity on a public blog where it's easily accessible and their IP, e-mail and possibly name is just one subpoena away...
...is that after all the hard work you put yourself through to buy untraceable visa gift cards to pay for a VPN service to use with your 7 proxies on an open wifi connection...you get no satisfaction. What do I mean? Well, what's the payoff? How do you know you were successful? When the feds DON'T break down your front door?
So just out of laziness I posted without login in and SlashDot calls posting anonynously "Anonymous coward"? Strange!!! Timothy, All the anonymous proxies you mentioned are internet based proxies and you are right, it is hard to trust a third person with your data. But why dont you use janus VM(just mentioning because it is not one of the options on the link you provided). It is a VM you run on one of your systems on DMZ port for example and then you route through it. So yes, it is hard to trust someone else but you can trust yourself. Have fun. Timothy, All the anonymous proxies you mentioned are internet based proxies and you are right, it is hard to trust a third person with your data. But why dont you use janus VM(just mentioning because it is not one of the options on the link you provided). It is a VM you run on one of your systems on DMZ port for example and then you route through it. So yes, it is hard to trust someone else but you can trust yourself. Have fun. http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/86043 janusvm.com