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Be anonymous

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Re: Be anonymous

#91

Post by tejohnso »

sampo wrote: post #76

Maybe Eric S. Raymond's advice from 21 years ago is no longer true in today's internet: > Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser…

In a tribe of people who tend to do illegal things, or are perceived that way, especially by those employed by three letter acronym agencies, I don't want to be among the few who are using their real name.

Re: Be anonymous

#93

Post by numeri »

hammock wrote: post #44
ronnier wrote: post #37

I don't care about being anon, but I don't want all my info sitting in databases, so I've made done the following and trying to evolve over time and fix gaps that I currently have. This is things I've done... * Use Brave browser with ublock origins and privacy badger * Use pihole + unbound to resolve my own DNS and do not use google * Run wireguard on my home network that I connect to when I'm out and need to use wif…

I believe Brave browser has fallen out of favor but I'm not an expert on why

Brave is amazing for encouraging wide-spread use of privacy tools. It's so easy to get my family and friends to use, and does a lot to improve security, privacy and quality of life, even for the absolutely not tech-inclined.

Re: Be anonymous

#94

Post by chillycurve »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #87
chillycurve wrote: post #60

I have been afraid of sharing my ideas, post history, etc. in a way that could be easily traced back to my identity for years. I made sure my accounts and usernames bore no personally identifiable tid-bits. I use a VPN religiously (that won't change). I've since decided that I am done with all that. I was afraid my employer might question my Reddit posting history (they wouldn't.) I was worried someone who Googled me…

Unfortunately, not everyone has this luxury. I know many people who are LGBT and still hiding from family. I’m bipolar, which I really do not want anyone hiring me to know. I don’t want people at work (or my family!) knowing and reading what I write. As a friend put it: once your coworkers find your Reddit account, it’s over.

I agree with everything you've said.

It is a matter of choosing what to disclose. I think most people in free countries can disclose a lot, if not most about themselves while withholding things like their sexuality or medical/mental challenges without withholding everything.

And reddit is a special case, even I am tempted to open that up.

Re: Be anonymous

#95

Post by chillycurve »

chaxor wrote: post #73
chillycurve wrote: post #60

I have been afraid of sharing my ideas, post history, etc. in a way that could be easily traced back to my identity for years. I made sure my accounts and usernames bore no personally identifiable tid-bits. I use a VPN religiously (that won't change). I've since decided that I am done with all that. I was afraid my employer might question my Reddit posting history (they wouldn't.) I was worried someone who Googled me…

What do you use as a custom DNS?

I use NextDNS and love it. It provides fine control over what is allowed, what's logged, etc.

If I was ultra-privacy focused, I'd probably go with the DNS provided by my VPN or a self-hosted resolver like unbound+pihole.

Re: Be anonymous

#96

Post by bufordtwain »

kibwen wrote: post #63
can16358p wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think with ML getting smarter and people posting (either with their identity or anonymously) more and more content, it will be trivial to crossmatch anonymously posted content to real identities by ML examining "styles" of text: from punctuation to sentence structure to vocabulary use, and it will have an accurate estimation of who that "anonymous" person is.

This would be pretty easy to counter by having a tool that would analyze any comment you post and strip all the identifying marks out of it; no punctuation other than periods, no complex or compound sentences, all words replaced by equivalents from the list of the most common thousand English words, all voices and tenses normalized, no paragraphs, no capitalization, etc.

At which point, nobody would want to read it.

Re: Be anonymous

#97

Post by hanniabu »

fsflover wrote: post #49
can16358p wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux part is perfecly valid IMO, though the rainforest was I think a bit deliberate exaggeration.

Linux is definitely more anonymous than Windows/Mac, but if you seriously want to be anonymous, you should use Qubes with Whonix.

What exactly positions those ahead of Linux?

Re: Be anonymous

#98

Post by justsomehnguy »

chaxor wrote: post #72
Barrin92 wrote: post #59

It's good advice. The problem with anonymity in an environment of ubiquitous surveillance is that it's paradoxical. The point of anonymity is achieving freedom, but staying anonymous expends energy and makes you a target, so you can't actually do any things that anonymity was supposed to get you. If what you really want is sovereignty, which is what most people confuse anonymity with, the goal is to be like what Erns…

> expending energy One thing I noticed out of many of the list items given in the post here: > Only use Tor > Always use a VPN > Never use Google -- only DuckDuckGo > Disable JavaScript on your browser > Watch all incoming and outgoing network calls regularly and scan for abnormalities > Encrypt your laptop and any external drives > End-to-end encrypted communication only > Don't use Gmail -- use ProtonMail > Never p…

> Don't buy domain names I'm not sure I understand this one - anyone have an explanation?

Even if you put bogus contact info (this is not a problem, honestly) you still need to pay for it somehow. If you would use your own CC for this then... Bonus/prepaid/gift cards are usually not accepted (too much fraud), so the best solution would be to actually steal someone's CC data and hope they wouldn't notice 10 bucks.

Re: Be anonymous

#99

Post by _carbyau_ »

sampo wrote: post #76

Maybe Eric S. Raymond's advice from 21 years ago is no longer true in today's internet: > Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser…

At the time, hacking also wasn't synonymous with "computer crime". So it was possible to be proud of stuff you did.

Re: Be anonymous

#100

Post by [deleted] »

cellis wrote: post #38

As careful as some of the things he suggests are...if you're truly wanted by a state-level actor or sufficiently motivated attacker, you won't be able to hide by simply using VPN and Tor. Especially if you're running something with many transactions like AlphaBay. You would need to obfuscate quite a bit more: - if you're using VPN traffic but most people "around" you aren't, you're a suspicious node; your ISP could e…

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