TOR: is it any good?

[RenewableCandy]

Stumbled on this:

What is Tor?

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis

Is it worth bothering with? Does it work? Anyone else know of sb who uses it?

[Little John]

Stumbled on this:

What is Tor?

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis

Is it worth bothering with? Does it work? Anyone else know of sb who uses it?

I have heard good things about TOR. At the moment I only use something called StartPage (https://startpage.com/). This is a search engine that completely anomymises your searches by piggybacking a proxy search on google. So you are, in fact, using google, but via a proxy. You are anonymised because all that google can see is the proxy isp. I am also considering using something like BT guard (http://btguard.com/) to anonymise any bit torrent downloads. This would be particularly useful for distributing politically sensitive documents. Not too much of an issue at the moment, but will undoubtedly become an issue as the years go by and things get grimmer.

I'm going to have another look at TOR and let you know what I make of it.

The bottom line, though, if you want to be absolutely sure of anonymity, would be to get hold of a mobile dongle under a false identity and top it up with credit. At the same time get hold of a pared-down Linux OS that can be held on a memory stick. With these two items, you can physically hijack any PC anywhere in the world and use it to go online completely anonymously. Even if the authorities were able to locate the ISP of the machine, you would be long gone. Alternatively, you could get hold of a second hand laptop and use it with the dongle. Just make sure you are physically well away from your home area when you use it so that the authorities cannot track you down to your home location. Instead, they would only be able to see that someone used the connection in some remote motorway service station carpark, for example.

[Tarrel]

Actually, you don't need any ID to pick up a mobile dongle. I use one which I paid for with cash at a city-centre phone store. I just handed over the cash and they handed over the box.

There is no law here (yet) like in South Africa, where you are legally obliged to register your phone if you have one.

[the_lyniezian]

Tor is supposed to be good for anonymity up to a point, though is not without invulnerabilities (for example whilst torrenting).

I wonder if any of the sort of people who come in here have particular need for anonymity online?

There is a downside to this as there are supposed to be websites hidden from the normal internet on it using the .onion pseudo top-level domain (hidden because the normal DNS system doesn't resolve to their IP addresses) which can but not always be used by paedophiles, drug dealers and so on.

[woodburner]

Depends who you are trying to hide from. I doubt anyone on PS would be of interest to the authorities because they can be seen posting things. The authorities are interested in the people who keep a very low profile.

[Little John]

Depends who you are trying to hide from. I doubt anyone on PS would be of interest to the authorities because they can be seen posting things. The authorities are interested in the people who keep a very low profile.

That's not necessarily true. There will no doubt be members on this board who, whilst not necessarily engaged in activity themselves that might be of interest to the authorities, are probably fewer degrees of freedom away from people than is common who may well be of interest to those authorities. Those people are, as you say, fairly low profile and so, quite plausibly, one way to infiltrate such circles is via their less interesting acquaintances who may frequent boards such as this.

[woodburner]

My goodness that's complicated. Can you let me have it in plain English?

[Little John]

My goodness that's complicated. Can you let me have it in plain English?

PS members may not be naughty themselves, but are arguably more likely to be mates with naughty people than people who are not members of PS. Therefore, by spying on PS member's general online activity, the authorities may possibly gain access to the identity of their naughty mates.

Plain enough?

If you think the above is implausible, then consider that the authorities have already shown themselves perfectly prepared to actually physically infiltrate extremely low risk groups of eco-activists and allow their male operatives to father children by members of those groups just in order to maintain their cover and spying operations. In view of that, sticking a few geek-operatives behind a few computer screens so that they can set up accounts on sites like this in order to engage in fishing exercises for potential enemies of the state is entirely plausible.

[RogerCO]

Naughty mates probably don't use any form of electronic or telephonic communication except in very specific circumstances leveraging the capabilities of the system to undermine it - and then under very strict conditions of anonymity as alluded to above.

Non-naughty mates of naughty people use the full range of comms tools to socialise and normalise the actions of their naughty mates' naughty mates without having any traceable connection to them.

Thus culture change and the conditions for revolutionary (small r) change are promoted.

Very many people on here would fall into this category - I suspect we are (almost all) well aware that BAU is non-viable over near (<10year) future and that the current system that supports BAU is unlikely to change gently of its own accord within that timescale...

If you are not being naughty yourself then remaining public and in clear view online and using that to express support for direct actions taken by naughty people who are not your first order mates is one way of helping their struggle on our behalf.

[Little John]

Naughty mates probably don't use any form of electronic or telephonic communication except in very specific circumstances leveraging the capabilities of the system to undermine it - and then under very strict conditions of anonymity as alluded to above.

Non-naughty mates of naughty people use the full range of comms tools to socialise and normalise the actions of their naughty mates' naughty mates without having any traceable connection to them.

Thus culture change and the conditions for revolutionary (small r) change are promoted.

Very many people on here would fall into this category - I suspect we are (almost all) well aware that BAU is non-viable over near (<10year) future and that the current system that supports BAU is unlikely to change gently of its own accord within that timescale...

If you are not being naughty yourself then remaining public and in clear view online and using that to express support for direct actions taken by naughty people who are not your first order mates is one way of helping their struggle on our behalf.

Fair points.

Truth is, I'd rather be naughty but I wouldn't have a fecking clue where to start.

[woodburner]

Unless you are very clever, you will be visible to the authorities no matter how hard you try.

[Little John]

Unless you are very clever, you will be visible to the authorities no matter how hard you try.

Dongle plus skinny Linux on a second hand laptop logged on far way from home and far away from any CCTV and you are fully anonymous. You can't guarantee that your activity cannot be tracked, but you can guarantee your own personal anonymity whilst engaging in that activity.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

TOR - The Onion Router.

The principle was mooted by the US Navy as a DARPA funded project and the majority of TOR gateways are still run by the US Govt. TOR derives a significant %% of its funding from the USG.

The network uses multiple encrypted encapsulation in order to mask the origin from the destination. However TOR traffic is relatively simple to spot on a TeleCo backbone so anyone that wants to know can quickly spot that TOR is in use.

Joining your PC to a TOR network carries with it the risk that you will be party to the transmission of some very illegal material that could carry serious jail time.

TOR shares the same weakness as nearly all P2P networks which is that you need to trust not only the protocol but also the network coordinator matrix.

It is also likely that certain nameless authorities can open the encryption like a wet sack.

If you want anonymous routing you have to ensure that you are not identified with the comms line or hardware you are using. To this end Steve's suggestion works just fine but be very careful that you NEVER power up the dongle on your home turf.

[woodburner]

You must have some really shady dealings that makes it worth travelling by a devious route where cctvs can't track you, just to be able to send some anonymous posts or emails. I hope you remember to leave your mobile phone switched on at home when you're out on your activities. Or better still give it to some one else to travel in another direction.

[Little John]

You must have some really shady dealings that makes it worth travelling by a devious route where cctvs can't track you, just to be able to send some anonymous posts or emails. I hope you remember to leave your mobile phone switched on at home when you're out on your activities. Or better still give it to some one else to travel in another direction.

Hang on a minute motor mouth.

It's not for you to make assumptions about other poster's personal activities. This thread was simply about anonymity on the net. Subsequent posts have explained how that works. Your initial contributions have been overtly dismissive (from what appears to be largely a position of ignorance) about the possibility of anonymity. However, since it has been subsequently shown that it is possible, albeit with some considerable difficulty (and risks if one is not extremely careful), to be anonymous and that your blanket dismissal was simply wrong, you are now resorting to ad-hominems towards those people who have pointed this out.

That's not on.