Hey all,

Thinking of mainly things like TOR or other methodologies that you might recommend, or not recommend or even be suspicious of...



Musical

It has its advantages, but I guess it depends on what you're using it for. Tor is pretty useless for things like Bittorrent. I don't encourage illegal downloading (buy your music!), but I guess I can say that Newsgroups and WASTE networks are a lot safer than P2P applications. If you're in the U.S., your ISP is required to keep records if your activity in case they are subpoenaed, so there's little you can do to be 'truly' anonymous.

Dunno.

I like tor, you should also consider using privoxy with it.

Jago,
Not thinking along the the lines of illegal downloads or anything P2P really... was more meaning general surfing and that being in regards to privacy. Privacy which in principle has been and is being eroded away right before our eyes. People who think its only those who have something to hide who want privacy are dead WRONG. Privacy is a matter of principle. Thats the type of privacy I'm talking about. Thanx for your comments.

TheFiresInTheSky,
Yes I've been to the Tor website and done some 'mileage' there getting my head around onion routing and such like. Oh and I clicked on those links you gave, and one thing I dont like doing is joining a forum ... site unseen. Both links took me to a registration page ...whats with that?? I'd like it better if I can view some threads and what not, 1st.
Thanks.

Musical

Unless he's edited his post the only links there are those in his signature, those weren't suggested links to visit

Well here's the guide, it was made by loyx from GSS.

Want to significantly decrease your chances of getting caught using torrents without slowing down your download/upload speed? Then read on.. (this applies to windows users though it shouldn't be much different for mac os x and linux)

Please remember that after doing this there is still a chance of getting caught!

Here is the list of programs you'll need:

PeerGuardian - This program blocks IPs or IP ranges that belong to any company that enforces copyright law, such as the RIAA or the MPAA, which is all kept on a handy blocklist that automatically updates everyday. It can also be used to block IP ranges that belong to the government, schools/universities, spyware companies, and more. (http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading...mirror=easynews)

Vidalia (tor and privoxy bundle) - Vidalia is a GUI to TOR, which is an extremely anonymous, and reasonably reliable proxy. You can browse it to browse anonymously like any other proxy. Privoxy ensures that the application you are using to connect to tor won't leak certain information that is not blocked by TOR.
(http://tor.eff.org/dist/vidalia-bundles/vi...2.14-0.0.11.exe)

uTorrent - One of the best torrent programs available, and very easy to set up. For the simplicity of this tutorial, use this program to download your torrents.
(http://download.utorrent.com/1.6.1/uTorren...6.1-install.exe)

Tor button Firefox extension - Used to test (or use) TOR. Instead of changing the settings in firefox everytime you want to use TOR, all you have to do is click TOR BUTTON and it does all that for you.. and when you're done, just click the tor button again. It's really that simple.
(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275)

After downloading and installing everything, let's set everything up. First, let's set up PeerGuardian. Just set it up to block P2P and Government, and make sure HTTP is unblocked. Click check update to see if there are any updates. After updating, go to the settings tab, click next, check the 'auto update every...' box if it isn't already checked, then set it to 1 day. Now click the protection tab. You have now set up PeerGuardian. Note that if you are playing a game there is a chance that peerguardian might block the game's servers. In this case, either disable peerguardian or unblock the IP by going to peerguardian, right click the IP it is blocking, and click UNBLOCK FOREVER.

Now let's set up Vidalia and Privoxy. All you have to do here is right click on the vidalia symbol and click start. Now wait a minute, and test it out. Open firefox and click the little button that says "Tor Disabled." Now it should be green, and obviously, it'll say "Tor Enabled." Try browsing around. If it works, you are ready to set up the torrents.

First make sure the torrents is set to an open port, and try downloading something simple like a linux distro, after you know that works, you're ready to set it up with TOR. Open up uTorrent, then go to options, then preferences, then click on connection. Set up the proxy section like so:

MAKE SURE USE PROXY FOR P2P CONNECTIONS IS *NOT* CHECKED. This method is extremely slow and just ruins it for the rest of us using TOR.

Now go download the torrent you want (download the torrent file using TOR) and try downloading the torrent with uTorrent. If all goes well, then, um, it works!

If not, post here and i'll try to help.

There is always going to be a record one way or another of what you did online. If your ISP doesn't have it then the servers you go to will.
The only way to be completely unknown on the internet is to not use the internet

JDPower Im not sure what you mean but maybe I should say that TheFiresInTheSky PM'd me, and instead of clicking on the link in the PM I clicked on the one in his post here Its all good now thanks.

rridgely, I know at the Tor site they say its not 100% bullet proof, but from what I can gather and understand so far, (which is not a lot) it gives the most degree of anonymous surfing there is. Also I thought it would be good to hear "outsiders opinions" so I could gain possibly a more unbiased view.

Thanks for your input so far guys
Musical

Ah, sorry. Didn't realise he'd pm'd you with some links, thought you were talking about links in his post, which there weren't any except for in his signature

Thats OK JD, worse things happen at sea eh ...

Cheers,
Musical.

well, i think with tor you're running out of a different country. which means that that country doesnt have to give up its logs to another country.
thats just what ive heard..

Thanks for the earlier post. Just a setup Q for utorrent: I have the Vidalia bundle, with the utorrent proxy set to Socks5 and port 9050, which seems to be recommended elsewhere. Tor is throwing the following error messages though:

Aug 03 18:22:44.546 [Warning] Your application (using socks5 on port XXXXX) is giving Tor only an IP address. Applications that do DNS resolves themselves may leak information. Consider using Socks4A (e.g. via privoxy or socat) instead. For more information, please see http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRo...FAQ#SOCKSAndDNS.


Where XXXXX are various ports.

Do you think Privoxy is resolving the DNS, or am I leaking info?

I never understood why individuals want near absolute anonymity on the Internet. I guess it's about preventing identity theft ?

You could have a look at Scroogle.

Scroogle

Scroogle Scraper

Hey TheFiresInTheSky,

Slightly off-topic, but where did you get your avatar from ? I laffed 'n' laffed
And, yea, I don't have a life !!

B.

Looks like it's off here burtman

http://www.iconator.com/tags.php?type=avatar&tag=penguin

Finally decided to change my avatar

Darkwing Duck ....
...Lets Get Dangerous...