Too bad it's soooo slow!

tails, a netbook, and hopping around on free wifi is one way to get around the slowness of tor. Just don't type one deet of personal info that might reveal your identity afk.

Even tor is suceptable. Its a cat and mouse game, sometimes theres no cat at all, sometimes hes too smart to be outwitted. Don't raise suspicion unnecessarily by trying to be %100 anon, thats a red flag as well, in this age of anti-terror security state madness. You could just end up getting profiled as someone with something to hide, and get more heat on yourself, just by someone snooping and seeing a bunch of encrypted packets, covering their tracks very well.

There is no absolute way to acomplish this goal, just necessity of degrees of protection, and the possibility of raising a red flag if you try to hard and end up on a watch list somewhere.

I like vpn's, since they're fairly commonly used, and not quite as obvious as tor. Just trust your vpn provider if they have personal info.

Please don't recommend not using Tor.

If you live in isolated area where there aren't much Tor users, use obfsproxy (scroll down for Alpha entry).

https://www.torproject.o...ects/torbrowser.html.en

Don't blindly trust VPN's. Read reviews, read their privacy policy and ask questions.

Perhaps your right, i just feel like its a niche type of packet traffic. Easy to spot, and the reccomendation about vpns was in regards to their widespread usage. IDK the details, but perhaps if your tor traffic is routed through a vpn, it may be a solution to that issue i have with tor.

I just think, its so rare, such a small portion of traffic, hell, developed by the us gov, nodes setup with the intention of figuring out users identitys by malicious parites, you have to question its effectiveness (tor). In totalitarian countries, i would assume, if gov officials saw tor packets/traffic on your line, it would raise a red flag. But the same may hold true for vpn's.

And yes, definately check into your vpn provider, more importantly the privacy laws in whatever country they are hosted in. How much political protection they may have, etc.

Intriguing concept some one, am I to understand that you can essentially take an anonymous proxy drive with you everywhere, through any computer?

For the record, if anyone runs into legal trouble don't hesitate to let me know. I have a few friends who are lawyers and I may be able to provide you with some free consultation although I'm not sure how familiar they would be with internet laws. The internet really is so messed up. But do know that any information taken illegally by the Government is inadmissible as evidence in court as well as I think for the procurement of a warrant. They need a warrant to surveil before they can tap your computer and so on. There are probably some loopholes relating to suspected terrorist activities. Of course these are almost formalities when it comes down to it, unless you have a lot of money and influence.

Many smartphones would already be able to do this, in fact i can truecrypt my device, use tor, pptp vpn services, and a bunch of other privacy related tools (linux based maemo n900).

But yes, the same holds true for portable/encrypted/persistent(changes to the os enviroment don't dissapear when your done). You could store a whole encrypted system on a microsd card the size of your fingernail, and boot it off most modern computers with a card reader. A 64gb class 10 microsd card, is $60 new, and thats supreme overkill for whats being described. You could get away with 8gb for a fraction of the cost, just get a fast card. Technological advances on silicon die tech, and memory storage amaze me more and more every day.

Thought i'd start a thread discussing my methods of browsing, which i do a lot of. Thus i'm a bit nit picky about the interface/software used, and have learned alot imho worth sharing.

-Software-

Firefox-

IMHO the king of web browsers, fast, secure, updated more often than you can remember, and lots of add ons to customize your expirence. You can also get a portable version, which has advantages beyond security/privacy implications i will detail later in this post.

Foxit Reader-

Freeware pdf reader, with integration into firefox. Faster, less overhead, free, and overall much better than adobe reader. I loathe adobe reader, and have a portable foxit reader install on my usb drive at all times .

Quicktime Alternative-

The title says it all, freeware quicktime support without apple bloatware that slows down your pc, and lets you view content you would normally need quicktime for.

Basically foxit/quicktime alternative are lightweight alternatives to slow, resource hogging closed source programs that do nothing but cause a hassle for me. Both of their counterparts have a bunch of services/processes running all the time that are unnecsssary.

Plugins/addons for firefox-

Adblock plus-

Say goodbye to banner ads, and pretty much 99% of popups and web advertisments. Greatly speeds up web page loading times, and cleans up the pages of all the advertising clutter.

Memory fox-

Keeps firefoxes memory usage in check, and prevents your firefox process from using hugh amounts of memory, also can be used for other processes. IME it speeds up browsing, and reduces lock-ups and crashes.

Flashblock-

One of my favorites, doesn't load flash elements of webpages, unless clicked upon. Ever open up a music thread and have your browser lock up from the 20+ youtube embedded windows? Fixes that problem in a jiffy. Another plugin that will speed up page loading times greatly.

Fasterfox-

Tweaks and setting adjustments to speed up firefox, i don't know too much about it, but it has improved firefoxes speed noticably ime.

Do not track me-

Prevents sites from tracking your browsing history, and notifys you of how intrusive the site you are on is in that respect. Great plugin imho.


Other tools-

Ramdrives-

A ramdrive, or a vitual disk mounted in ram, if you have extra ram, is orders of magnitude faster than the fastest ssd's. Storing your cache/temp folders for firefox, and windows, is a great way to speed things up. I use a proprietary application supplied with my pc, but theres many freeware apps that do the same. Just make sure they backup the disk on a regular basis, since ram is cleared when your pc powers off. Installing firefox portable on a ramdisk is also a really good way to speed it up. My firefox install on the ramdisk i have loads in under a second.

ccleaner-

Cleans not only old browser data, but system data, and helps speed your computer up in general. Clearing old cache data from a few weeks of browsing can free up in some cases up to a GB or more of space.




Feel free to post your own suggestions, or if you have any questions feel free to pm/post them.

I'll do another post on security/privacy when i have some more time, unless someone is ambitious and decides to do it for me

Viva la nexus

TDT

Thanks for the tip on QTime Alt...

Some more ways:
Chrome: Clean, quick and user friendly
StartPage: here because screw Google and all their privacy issues.
Hushmail: Shhhh...
Foxit: Most definitely.
AdBlock: Yes.
CCleaner: Clean after every session (set your cookies that you want to keep for auto logins etc)
Host file Blocking: Huge lists can be added to stop all sorts of unwanted stuff see here
PeerBlock: Add lists and is completely invaluable
KatProxy: here ... trust me
AVG antivirus: Never ever had a problem with this.
Malwarebytes: Just works.
Truecrypt: Well you just never know, what if !?
SoftEther VPN: Everyday a new IP in a different country. (Tor is just way too slow)
Also keep a tight reign on your firewall especially the 'outgoings'

Great tips, thanks.

(Chrome = Google. if you're concerned with Googles privacy issues, don't use Chrome)

So I use Firefox as well. Best IMO. My suggestions is to get ghostery addon for it. This along with Adblock create an awesome experience. Also get sandboxie. EVERYOnE should be browsing the Internet while sandboxed. This very lightweight program keeps anything from getting on your hard drive. Cookies, spyware, malware, ect stays in the sandbox and every couple days you wipe the sandbox and your back to square one again. Sometimes ads or popups get past Adblock and if they do your A ok. This program is a MUST.

If you download while sandboxed you you have to recover the file, easily, in order for it to actually show up in a non sandboxed folder. If you click links that open a separate program that program will be sandboxed by default. So if that program is a downloader of some sort you have to open the link while NOT sandboxed. Otherwise it's kind of a pain to recover that file to your hard drive.

Can't argue with anything there

Well, mabey a few. Chrome is google software, and privacy issues exist as previously stated.

And imho anti-virus software is unnecssary. I haven't used software antivirius in years, and have had mabey one or two infections in that time. Bootable anti-vitus live cd/iso/usb distros work way better at fixing the problem. Run on a regular basis if you want protection.

My parents both have anti-virus software, and they get viriuses all the time (avg, malware bytes). Just cleaned both their pc's by booting ~6 different live anti-virus iso's installed on a multiboot usb and scanning like a madman. Only thing that got my dads firewall to work again.

Running a scan while the os is not loaded is much more effective, and keeps your pc fast by only having essential software/processes/services running. Most of them can update their definition files when booting a non-persistent scanning distro too. Kapersky, AOSS, AVG, fsecure, etc. YUMI multiboot has a whole list of antivirus iso's you can install on a usb drive.

Chrome now hosts 'do not track' extensions...so that's a +
As for AV...my first night visiting Bangalore a Virut B strain ate right through Avast and wrecked my HDD. A clean install was my only remedy.
Some people get lucky...I don't risk it any more.

Theres different ways to approach the problem, installed software has its advanages/disadvantages.

Personally, i use a bootable imaging tool called ping. Install it on a ext hard drive, and make backups as often as necessary, it has an incremental function so you don't have to re-image the whole os every time. You can store the images on the same drive you boot ping from.

Worst case scenario, and bootable antivirus distros cant fix the problem, wipe the drive clean, and restore your ping backup. Losing a few days work is better than having to start fresh.

I just have issues with antivirus software slowing down my system. Call me a process/service nazi, but i run a tight ship on my main pc.

The same reason i go out of my way to just get drivers for hardware, and not the extra software crap that runs constantly in the background. Or why i refuse to install any apple/adobe/ati software, or anything that for some reason needs half a dozen services and processes running in the background constantly. Eating up resources and slowing things down.

Tor combined with a VPN connection you trust is a great idea lol.

First of all your ISP traffic gets routed through a normal public VPN. No red flags.

If the VPN company gives out your information, they can see your IP address, but they can't see your internet traffic (they can't see what you did) as its encrypted through the Tor network.

If the Tor servers get confiscated /hacked by government agencies as happened in Germany, they can see what you did online, but they cant see your IP addres (they cant see who you are) as its tunneled through a VPN server

The only way for someone to connect what you did online to who you are is to gain access to both the Tor and VPN servers and manually combine the data together.

Exercising this amount of energy only applies to searches for people who have have so much to hide, they wouldn't be using a public VPN in the first place. Meaning: the chance of this happening is neglectably small.

The only thing remaining is properly securing your local machine.

Thoughts?

^^ Thats the conclusion i came to.

It seems like a nice little system to fly under the radar as far as hiding tor traffic in vpn connections, depending on the vpn provider/connection/tos.

If you encrypted the disk the live os was on, and never transmitted any information that could identify yourself (IE host machine/os comprimised) you aer pretty well protected.

But the flaw is the host machine/os is always a resource for malicious attacks to gain access to information when its live and running. Perhaps a firewall ONLY allowing tor traffic, and other severly selective blocking techniques could give you some kind of attack proof host os/system, but thats not something i've looked into.

I do like the point you made (and how simply you explained it), that hiding tor traffic in a vpn is a great way to fly under the radar when using tor, with the right vpn provider. But VPN's have their own security problems, so thats worth looking into as well. And once again full circle back to the host machine security problem. Its the achillies heel of such a setup.

Lots of ways to install trojan spyware to overcome such grandiose obfuscation techniques, if the effort is put forth/worth it. Just takes one person with the know how, and they aren't just lone hackers, governments have the capability to do that stuff. But you'd have to be a pretty big target for them to spend that much time trying to figure out your identity.

I agree.

In the end.. when it comes to total security nothing and no one can be trusted. I'd expect that the deeper you dive into it, the complexer it becomes, and the more it seems you can never ever be 100% secure. Like a bottomless fractal. Maybe quantum entanglement is the ultimate solution? But currently, security exploitation is endless. In the end the big boys on the highest level are probably able to exploit every modem and router and see what everyone does anyways. So at some point you must stop to think, how far do I take this?

As much as I hate the phase 'I have nothing to hide'... If you can never reach 100% security anyway, at some point you must have this mentality. Unfortunately most people have a very low border. They don't care about anything. That's not good. But caring endlessly isn't good either. As with everything in life, the key is finding the balance.

What I care about is the following: I avoid that too much of what I do online gets linked to my identity by internet companies such as Google (by using startpage, firefox, etc). I avoid that my ISP has a full record of my internet traffic (by using Tor and from now on combined with VPN). I avoid that spyware and trojans on my local machine trace everything I do (by using live linux usb's and having different encrypted partitions on my hdd). Or by setting up a system as explained by the OP.

The point when I stop caring and think I have nothing to hide is the following: If anyone wants to waste the amount of effort it takes to hack specific Tor servers, use international diplomacy to gain access to specific VPN servers and run complex exploits on my machine, then combining all this data together to puzzle out my identity and find my motivations.. I'd say screw it, let 'em. I'd feel honored to get all this special attention.