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Ask HN:How to be Anonymous?

12 points by imran ↗ HN
In this digital world where everything seems to be vulnerable, how can one be quiet a bit anonymous? Well facebook is of US intelligence, a spy machine (according to Julian Assange). Google has backdoor access to its systems (remember the chinese hackers article?) Tor is again of the US intelligence (some article on HN). Intelligence agencies can easily map ip addresses on google database with those same ip address used for accessing facebook. Just a curious thought!

11 comments

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guruz
I'd suggest looking at Freenet. But that's a walled garden, not the open internet.
Ixiaus
Or GNUnet, as it matures.
donohoe 

  Tor is again of the US intelligence
Thats news to me. I remember hearing some rumor that turned out to be completely baseless. Are you referring to that or something else?
bobwebb
The program was originally developed by the US Navy to help them protect their own communications, as part of their onion routing project: http://www.onion-router.net/ I have no idea what kind of involvement they have right now, but if a 'backdoor' was introduced by the US Government (I assume this is what conspiracy-theorists are scared of), people would know about it. After all, Tor is open source.
aspir
Read up on Evan Ratliff's project:

http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/08/author-evan-ratliff-is-o...

He was found on ~day 25, even though he used some pretty high-level tactics to try to remain anonymous. If no one's specifically looking for you, these might work. However, the less on that I took away was that if someone's incentivized enough to find you, you will be found eventually. No matter what. He's done some talks regarding the project; they're entertaining, and may be of interest to you.

achompas
Well, I mean he also dropped hints about his location on Twitter and Facebook during the project. Anyone looking for anonymity would stay away from those.
spottiness
This is not advertising but related to the question: if you want to express yourself anonymously, you can use us. We erase or never capture whatever may link the creator with the posting. Every posting is heavily moderated before publishing.
staunch
Pretty sure any time a guy with an Arabic name posts on a forum asking how to avoid being detected by "US intelligence" he just about ruined his chances :-)
imran
lol But hey it just was a curious question !
SageRaven
It depends entirely on your threat model. From a simple proxy service to a TOR-enabled livecd on a diskless laptop from a different McDonald's or Starbucks location each day to everything in between, it totally pretends on what you want to read and/or publish and who you want to remain hidden from.
avstraliitski
Communications: Never communicate more than once under the same identity. Do not use a cell phone. Borrow other people's phones, Skype, or use public phones if you need to make or receive a call. Never communicate with anyone whose inbound calls may be monitored. Use one time pad encryption where possible. Otherwise, fall back to public/private key.

Finance: Cash is king. Use prepaid disposable credit cards or stolen credit cards if you need to make a credit card transaction. If you have access, use an informal exchange system such as the much famed Islamic system. To move money internationally, buy and sell expensive items such as art or jewellery that you can carry on your person as you travel.

Travel: Boats still seem a very good option for international movement across oceans. If no ocean is involved, catch public transport that does not require leaving your identity and movements on databases (eg: unreserved trains, buses). Stolen vehicles are preferable to registered ones, obviously.

Other: You can also assume other people's identities by stealing their identity papers/other documents. It seems these days this is getting much harder as 'identity theft' countermeasures are put in place.