29 replies to this topic

[waylitjim]

are you guys just talking about proxies?

Yes.
Anonymizing offers a valuable layer of protection by routing your communication through a third-party proxy server that substitutes its Internet address for yours before forwarding your packets to the intended destination. GhostSurf is a good choice. It covers all the basics, the most central of which is hiding your IP address. But it also offers encryption and antispyware features.

You can turn anonymizing on and off, so you can surf the Net directly when desired. For ex. turn off anonymizing during email runs and visits to a few Web sites you trust. The main reason for doing this is that Ghostsurf does eat up quite a bit of memory and can slow you down.

Some more info from an article "Surf the Web Anonymously"
When you surf the Web, your life is an open book. Your IP address, your Internet cache, browser history, and more is open to snooping. Each packet you send generally travels through several computers to reach its destination.

Along the way, the packet can be intercepted and used by others to track your Internet activities -- or to attack your computer, maliciously or otherwise. Further, web sites share information about your visit with others to target you with ads that match your activity profile. If you're a regular web adventurer, these and other ungracious activities happen to you frequently with or without your knowledge.

Anonymizing software can provide a key layer of protection by routing your communication with most web sites through an anonymous proxy server that substitutes its Internet address for yours. That way, you never actually "touch" the web site; the proxy does it for you. And so your private information is kept private.

[Slimlilshroomer]

Damn. That sums it up right there. Well done :eusa_clap

[waylitjim]

On Staying Hidden. Lans, Wans and Loopholes.

Basically, and IP Address is assigned by a service provider to a computer or network. Not necessarily a single computer, because entire networks of computers can access the internet through one IP address. There are private network ip address allocations. Now to the average user, there's a Wide Area Network (WAN), and a Local Area Network (LAN). WAN is basically the internet, and a LAN would be multiple home or office computers linked together.

There are static IP's and dynamic IP's.
Static IP's always remain the same, Dynamic are changed whenever a user logs on (typically dial up), or after a specific time (typically broadband dynamic IP's). Now, if you have a dynamic IP Address, you can most likely bet your life on the fact your ISP logs which customers use which IP addresses at which time. So if you have a dynamic IP, let it be known that you're just as recognizable. Like a static IP is bound specifically to an ISP's account, so is a dynamic IP, only it's temporary. However, the logs will remain for however long your isp's log retention rate is (which is most likely a few months at least).

Spoofing, anonymity, and other myths
A lot of people are under the impression that you may be able to hide your IP address over the internet. This is not necessarily correct. If you're accessing the internet from your internet account, there's no way to hide your identity from your ISP.

Now, there's a popular term that's thrown around a lot: spoofing. This is when you trick another computer into believing the information it's recieving is coming from computer other than the sending computer.

A way you could possibly hide your identity is to use a proxy or http tunnel. This would route the connection a program makes through a third party computer before hitting its destination.

However, this sort of solution is pretty much a coin flip. If a proxy server logs who's accessing what and when (and there's a good chance that it does), it can potentially be traced back to you. You might also want to take into account that using such services will most likely result in very slow speeds.

To put it bluntly - you are not anonymous, no matter how much much you'd like to be.
Depending on certain situations, you can almost certainly be tracable. There really is no way to disguise your identity online. From http://www.p2pnet.net/article/8156

[waylitjim]

See the IP address others are seeing using these tests.
A proxy will display a different IP and location then your own.

http://www.2privacy....ivacy-test.html

[Felix]

Use Tor & Privoxy

http://tor.eff.org/

http://www.privoxy.org/

The How To:

http://gentoo-wiki.c...Tor_and_Privoxy

[Hippie3]

i'm not very confident in such measures, to be honest.
i worry that using them sends up a red flag that draws
even more attention.
bottom line is
encryption of anything you fear might be compromising.
and if it's not encrypted
then guard your tongue about what you reveal.

[waylitjim]

A few nice features of Ghostsurf is that it's much more then an anonymizer.
It has an excellent spyware/adware program built into it, some people use
it just for this reason. It's really not a red flag if you use this application.
Another nice feature is the personal data vault, which is a password protected
vault to store data you consider private. If your computer was ever hacked into
or confiscated, it would make it very challenging for others to view your
confidential files and pictures.

[pskovinsky]

If you really want to keep data personal use a USB memory stick, if it's not plugged in, nobody can read it..
Plus, a quick connect to a car ignition coil(or wall power) and no incriminating data for the feds.

Personaly, i don't trust the anonymous/proxy surfing things at all, it's an extra step, sure, but it can still be traced back to you easily.

[gema]

Ghostsurf plantinum 2006 for $19.98 brand new.