Privacy and anonymity

Privacy and anonymity
Kelly Martin, 2006-02-14

Privacy and anonymity on the Internet are as important as they are difficult to achieve. Here are some of the current issues we face, along with a few suggestions on how we can become a little more anonymous on the Web.

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Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-15
Matthew Murphy (1 replies)

Uhh... use dial-up to mask my IP? No thanks... I've graduated up from the stone age.

Meanwhile, if you're seriously concerned by (gasp) a static IP address, try:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

You'll usually get a new IP and if you don't, you can resort to MAC spoofing if despe...

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Re: Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-17
Kelly Martin (1 replies)

Renewing your IP address will sometimes give you a new IP. Changing your MAC address or installing a new device with a different MAC address should get you a new IP. Both are still offered by the same provider, are traced back to the owner, and do nothing to improve privacy at all. So there is no po...

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Re: Re: Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-17
Kelly Martin (2 replies)

Sorry my mistake - on second thought, renewing your IP address with the same provider does help a little bit against a website owner when you have a normally static IP, however your IP is still easily tracked back to your ISP. Doesn't add much in terms of real privacy, in other words. :)...

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It's a lost battle! 2006-02-17
assurbanipal

It appears that the (legitimate) desire for anonimity clashes with the need to trace back actions in order to identify their authors (desirable, when looking for the bad guys).
There are two things to consider... the technical stuff (how I log you and what info you expose), and privacy policies and...

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Re: Re: Re: Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-22
Matthew Murphy

You're right... having a dynamic IP provides little-to-no real anonymity value. That's what I was critiquing -- the notion of me switching to dial-up for a dynamic IP.

Not gonna happen... especially when I can just release my IP lease and acquire a new one for the same amount of "protection". :-...

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Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-15
Alexey Vesnin

You're right - privacy, security and many things at all are started from end-user. It's hard to be truly anonymous today - because many goverment geeks are well-payed to prevent such a fact... And it's not a paranoid conclusion - IT specialist is a diagnosis, way of thinking and living - and paranoi...

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Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-16
Peter Pan

Great article. Nicely and humorously described current privacy threats and (semi) solutions.
In responde to Alexey Vesnin article, I would hope dearly tor would never be deemed ilegal. The right to privacy is the fourth amendment, and the tor system is completly legit. Banning such usage of an anon...

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Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-17
Anonymous (1 replies)

I don't know about you guys, but I (often) try to my connection encrypted from my PC to the web (through the ISP). Freedom Websecure offered this (but seem to be discontinuing the service - boo!) so I might soon try Guardster (SSL proxy). This way I (only) have to trust the proxy, which is still a...

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Re: Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-17
Privacy is my Right (1 replies)

I was going to sign up with Guardster but instead decided to try Anonymizer.com Total Net Shield. It works great and does not slow down my surfing (since I change my router MTU to 1454). Very fast!

Grrrreat article!...

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Re: Re: Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-21
Alexey Vesnin

I consider that MTU-minimizing anonymizers are more useful rather than slow... It's about a QoS and service perfomance, not about MTU value. And remember that smaller packet is easier to transmit...

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Privacy and anonymity 2006-02-20
Anonymous (1 replies)

> ... but even when I'm not doing something
> wrong (which is most of the time), I get very > nervous when I hear about privacy issues
> popping up in this way.

Why?
The only people with a legitimate reason to be afraid of people seeing what they are doing are the people who ARE doing someth...

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Re: Privacy and anonymity 2006-05-07
Anonymous

OK, it is here again ... where do you live ? Who are your president/prime minister/whatever now ? Was you voting for him/her ? And do you agree with everything he/she is doing ?

Maybee it seems like paranoia to you now, but that might change anytime ... and it will be too late to search for priva...

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Privacy and anonymity 2007-06-29
Anonymous

http://www.anonymity.ws - useful resources related to online anonymity....

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