Ways to protect yourself online?

[novicebb]

Looking for ways protect myself online. I am going to get keptprivate.com email account to send and receive encrypted emails and I am learn more about pgp as well. But how do I hide my ip address and who I connect with, my OS usage and what browser I am using from institutions or individuals I don't want to know this information?

 

[painman]

You are looking for something called a proxy.

www.findnot is one example of many.

If you want to do it yourself and go full throttle google something called "Tor".

Looking for ways protect myself online. I am going to get keptprivate.com email account to send and receive encrypted emails and I am learn more about pgp as well. But how do I hide my ip address and who I connect with, my OS usage and what browser I am using from institutions or individuals I don't want to know this information?

 

[Joe West]

get linux or bsd. they are operating systems like windows, but much much better as fas as security. i suggest simplymepis.

linux/bsd negates the need for antivirus and spyware blockers. SM comes with a built in high quality firewall, unlike windows. windows default firewall is SHIT.

free proxies are often slow. they are also often illegal. most of them are hacked servers or pcs thats been had by trojans. but fast or slow, they often dont stick around too long. and of course in the case of a home pc, they have to be turned on and connected to the net to work, as well as maintain the same IP.

tor and privoxy were good before 100 million ppl got on them. now, its kinda slow all the time.

pay proxies are better, but most of them are done through credit cards. kinda defeats the whole privacy thing.

this is why war driving is popular lol.

about the best advice other than what ive given you is to go firefox browser, and look at proxy extensions at the extensions page. one of the proxy extensions lets you load alot of proxies in, and you can set variables about when to go to the next proxy on your list. like, every 3 pages you visit. or every 15mins etc.

 

[oldtimer]

linux/bsd negates the need for antivirus and spyware blockers.

Explain to me how Linux/BSD negate the need for an AV.

 

[FTT010101]

Alll The protection you'll need

FTT

 

[MANWHORE]

You have to go to computer forums and ask the experts which are probably 15yr old kids .. IP addys will be given up by Java alot of times so when you think you are hidding and no one can see your IP addy go to a site that you can check it and watch them show you your IP addy in about 2 seconds .. Linux is also ,, from what i hear ,, not as easy to work with like Windows is ... What are you trying to hide anyway .. Your not going to get busted for discussion of AAS .. we are all here to learn .. just use email such as Cyber to talk business .. Here is the way i see it .. It took all of us who .. basically all the VETS here and other boards YEARS to learn what we know about Gear and we are still learning but the thing about learning about gear is you can take your time .. See if you start getting crazy online with illegal shit jumping right into it thinking your protected when your not,that could cost you your freedom .. Your best bet is to do the shit you want to hide through Encrypted Email and use a different screen name for hanging on boards .. In the meantime,learn what you can about protection .. . I know a little but never could really get into it because i really don't have anything to hide .. I did but The word about my little penis has been out for some time now and i feel a sense of relief .. Waiting till everyone took a shower so i was in there alone and no one could see .. Turning off the lights before sex and using a banana on girlfriends for years .. Always wearing 3 pairs of swim trunks worrying about friends playing pranks and pulling them down on me .. Scary stuff trust me .. OK OK i need sleep .. I'm going to just keep typing one day and see how many words these replys can hold .. O i will fill it up i know i can .. 10,000 words? shit not a problem .. I feel like i am in a trance when i type sometimes .. I remember starting the paragraph and then i wake up at the end and wonder what the hell happened .. O YEAH i am very tired i don't even know what the hell i'm talking about now .. I picked the wrong month to stop drinking .. feel good though and very happy in the gym .. goodnight my peops

 

[Joe West]

Explain to me how Linux/BSD negate the need for an AV.

ok.

lets use a couple examples:

1. you go on download.com and grab a free cd ripper and a new desktop theme. unbeknownst to you, the theme contains a rootkit. you are then used as part of a ddos attack, as a proxy, or a file server etc etc.

does linux have rootkits? there have been some yes. last i checked, there were exactly 4 working trojans for linux. i would bet, in all honesty, that bsd doesnt even have that. so even if youre using older software, you have maybe 8 things youre vulnerable to.

how do you get them?

not easily. as a matter of fact in all my years learning about and using linux, i have yet to find someone who was infected. the most likely way is a local infection, that is someone finding an exploit that works on your system, then introducing it via cd or floppy. this requires some research or blind luck, so as you can see its not easy.

repositories like debians apt-get, which is what simplymepis uses as well, are throughly checked and rechecked. unless you add a repo thats set up to be a trap, youre very unlikely to get it this way.

as i said, ive never ran into anyone who was ever infected.

but, being conscience of the very remote risk, i do have a firewall and an AV, as well as 2 rootkit programs. just in case my box ever acts funky, i could run those. it just never has.

linux is open source software. the linux kernal has less than a fifth of the bad code than does a fully patched windows xp pc. its mainly those flaws that enable many of the problems of windows. these flaws arent as pronounced in linux because of the 10000 ppl that maintain the linux kernal. i didnt typo, i said 10 thousand.

2. Linux has no spyware.

you can surf all the porn sites you want. you will never get spyware. the worst thing you might get is a tracking cookie, and even that isnt a regular occurance. same goes for BSD as far as i know.

3. the linux/bsd desktop market is about 2%.

and that 2 percent is split up over RPM based distros, deb distros, whatever slackware uses and whatever gentoo uses. then on the bsd side, you have 3 different types of bsd. each of the types have at least 6, and some several dozens, of distros underneath the top hierarchy.

its simply not worth the time of a hacker to set up a trap for something that might have an actual userbase of .25 percent worldwide. additionally saying that theres a likelyhood that only a couple hundred of that type might ever come to the website. for those like lop.com who sell there spyware, it still doesnt make sense. windows dominates, so windows gets nailed. dont use windows, dont get nailed.

4. what are the most common vulnerabilities for bsd/linux?

programs. this goes for windows, unix, bsd, mac osx etc. i cannot recall of a case that it took more than 2 days for a given vendor to repair a vulnerabilty that was serious. i say serious, because the cross platform firefox browser has a couple code flaws that make it a memory hog is left running for long periods. simple to take care of and not a threat.

5. so youre saying linux/bsd cant be hacked?

not at all. but good luck with linux, and forget bsd.

most ppl out there doing port scans are looking for windows OS. theyre easier to work with, and theres hundreds of millions of them out there. of a port scan returns a result of a linux/bsd platform, most ppl will keep on going.

basically the ppl who can hack linux/bsd wont. either there security testers or other professionals. or theyre looking to hit corporations and govts, not home users.

the most common way to get linux hacked is through social engineering. and thats not a fault of the software, thats yours.

also, every linux distro ive ever tried almost forces you to make a user account so you dont run as administrator [root]. what little can be done as root is even less as user.

whoever said linux isnt user friendly is wrong, to a large degree. alot of ppl get told dumb shit advanced distros, jump in, and cant even get on the internet. NO ONE should ever use straight debian, gentoo, or slackware to start off on. and no one should ever, IMO, use any of the BSDs to begin with. thats asking for a broken keyboard.

as a matter of fact, i dont see why anyone would need an advanced distro just to putter around the internet on. or play music or movies, emulation etc.

if youre used to windows, there is a slight learning curve for linux. however, the reverse would be true too.

but, spend about a week with linux and youll have it almost entirely figured out for bbasic needs.

i dont have to hunt around for drivers. my pc doesnt slow down the fuller my hard drive gets. never need defragmentation. upgrades are free. no registration. no denial of services for a bogus registration number. no DRM [digital rights management] which means i can almost always do what the hell ever i want to any cd or dvd.my distro comes packaged with a cd ripper and burner. it has the option of a dvd burner too, if i had a dvdr drive. office software. built in games. etc etc. all free.

i never even have to hunt down a program. i open up synaptic and search from over 18 thousand programs right there. i can upgrade from there too.

theres very very little i cant do that windows can, but theres a whole lot i can do that windows cant.

the only time i would warn against jumping to linux is if youre a PC gamer. there are a couple pc games that have linux versions, or can be otherwise played on linux. but thats not many. but if you dont play pc games on your pc....

are you an snes/genesis/nes/sms/tg16/neogeo/etc emulation fan? there are emulators for linux, most of them copies of the windows versions youve played. some of them actually started out on linux lol.

linux, and as far as i know, bsd, also have no intent on going along with the trusted computing movement.