Why does tor matter? If the DEA are watching you, they already know where you live, and where you work (yay tax records). The idea is to not get reported to the DEA, period.

Agreed that TOR shouldn't be seen as a magic cloak but it's highly unlikely that it's been cracked. Remember that the gvt has an invested interest in NOT cracking TOR as it has in cracking it. Pretty much all intelligent agencies use it on a daily basis. To crack it would be akin to exposing half their operations on and off shore.

If TOR was cracked then the darkmarkets that we've seen gain popularity over the last 5 years wouldn't exist and they are in fact thriving as a billion dollar industry. Any markets go down and when it's human error (Silk Road) or an exit scam (Evolution).

It is possible for agents to theoretically control exit nodes and possibly monitor a users behaviour but we're talking serious man power for that to happen at the moment. Is anyone really that important? What TOR does really well is stopping dragnet style surveillance on the mass population.

On a similar note, PGP is safe using 4096 as far as I'm aware. Keys look long but long is secure

I am not in any way a qualified security tech so they might be able to counteract the above info. I'm just a conscientious objector to all forms of surveillance and have been for many years, trying to minimise my cyber footprint to the best of my abilities.

I'd be interested to know what percentage of nexian's even have a Facebook account, I'd guess it would be quite a low percentage. Perhaps there could be a poll. I should say that I gave up Facebook around the time of the snowden leaks, which happened to be around the time of my first powerful experience. I just dislike Facebook because it seems to me that the image people portray of themselves there is the way they want others to see them and not the real them. It's a popularity contest basically, not to mention all of the security concerns that others have listed above. Doesn't seem even remotely worth it for a person who is engaged in personal growth.

Seems to me that Facebook is as close as possible to being the exact opposite of the nexus

I live in Iceland and here there are countless groups on facebook for dealing drugs.
All kinds of drugs and the dealers just put photos of their stuff and a phone number.
I could at most times get anything delivered to my house.
The police shut down I think around 70 of those sites a few weeks ago but they just keep popping up.

i live in mexico and could get you killed or kidnapped as the first danger, law enforcment is the less issue here, they barely check on social media sites lurking for this groups.

about cartels and stuff a lot of them use facebook, twitter, and others to brag about they activities besides that they can watch who is posting drug related stuff, at least here this kind of groups are a real danger.

anything facebook is banned from my presence,
IMO theres no use for facebook period.

as far as smart phones,
we exhibit great control over them.
they are never ever used for sketchy behavior,
and use entirely seperate accounts.
we avoid carrying them whenever possible.
we use several
and we swap them with associates sometimes.

frequently we remove batterys
smart cards are periodically incinerated.

for computers,
surfing is one thing, hardware another.
we use removable drives, and a variety of dedicated OS pre loaded drives.
most drives encrypted, and are mostly flash ( easily destroyed.)

guests at my home / or place of ops,
are required to place all electronics in a safe at the door.
as i allow zero loose electronics.

if you say you dont have any, i do have a metals wand.

the bottom line is this,
achieve the highest level of security you can.
then study more and make it higher.

the war on privacy is easy to win today.
just give snoopers scorched earth.

dont be paranoid, be anon.
paranoia inhibits , anon liberates.

nice to see peeps thinking of such safety related topics..............