surfing anonymously for the perpetual beginner?

[Fght]

if tor is not safe like mentioned below what is the solution?
https://pando.com/2014/12/26/if-you-sti ... damn-mind/

[ShiftPlusOne]

Solution to what?

[Fght]

Solution to what?

surfing anonymously...!

[ShiftPlusOne]

Too vague! Who do you want to hide your activity from?

[ShiftPlusOne]

To answer the vague form of the question, there is no absolute anonymity on the internet.

[Fght]

so what way a beginner can use to be as closest to be anonymous on the internet that he can?

[PeterO]

Unplug the internet !
PeterO

[Fght]

but i want to surf not unplug the internet..

i'm asking that for a general knowledge...

[ShiftPlusOne]

so what way a beginner can use to be as closest to be anonymous on the internet that he can?

Again, depends on who you want to hide your activity from. I'll go with the answer most people would give and say VPN, but that still has problems. Aside from potential DNS leak showing the sites you access, from the patterns of data flow, it would be easy for your ISP or people on your network to tell roughly what you're doing. And of course you're trusting the VPN provider with all of your data 100%.

I suspect using a VPN is the biggest "hey, look at me, I'm probably doing something illegal!" signal you can give to your ISP and law enforcement agencies. So, why are you asking? Are you breaking the law and want to hide your tracks? If so, you're asking in the wrong place. Are you trying to keep your personal and internet life separate? If that's the case, that's not really something you need any external service for, just be mindful of what information you give out online. Do you just want to hide exactly what you're doing from people on your network and your ISP? To what degree? There isn't one simple answer here. I'd say there isn't any answer at all. You're dealing with technology which transfers data from one computer onto another... if there was any anonymity, that task would be impossible.

[Fght]

can you in anyway build such system in the future? a system that will allow people to share information anonymously on the net freely without being catched by governments or by unpleasant people? do you have an estimation to when such thing can happen?

[kusti8]

That's what tor is trying to do, but nothing is foolproof.

[Fght]

this time i'm talking about a system that will do it seamlessly. not like tor...
as tor is really not amazing at it at all

[ShiftPlusOne]

I don't want to say something is impossible, but I think it's improbable.

How do you get something from point A to point B without at least a few parties knowing how to get to point B? Currently, most of the important data is encrypted so that said parties don't know what the data is exactly. They still know how much data there is and how big the chunks are which is enough to deduce the sort of thing you're doing. At some point, that data needs to be decrypted. If it's possible for you to decrypt it, it's possible for others, if they have the same information you do. You can also try to obfuscate the path itself, as tor does. The way tor does it relies on having lots of people know a small part of the path, but not the whole path. If enough nodes are run by people who want to track the data, they can piece those routes together. Even before the Snowden leaks, it should be obvious that intelligence agencies are very interested in being able to intercept this sort of information and that they have the resources to do it. That ability gives governments the power to win wars, so of course it's high up on the list of priorities.

The aim shouldn't be to hide traffic from the government, but to have a government which doesn't snoop on innocent civilians. The thing is that intercepting and traffic and storing metadata about it is a very powerful tool and governments are not likely to want to give it up. Then it becomes more of a technological problem of separating data of innocent civilians from that of criminals. And hey, that happens to be exactly what these systems do. Believe it or not, NSA doesn't care about what you do. You are not that interesting. There's little value in knowing what kinds of cat videos you watch. It's counter intuitive, but by trying to obfuscate your data, you're making yourself interesting to these sorts of systems and are more likely to be snooped on as a result. It's an unfortunate case of 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'll leave it.

[cyrano]

Start with tor browser and learn...

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

[r3d4]

In the 21st century you'll find cameras *everywhere*
except:
where our food comes from
where our energy comes from and,
where our waste goes

'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'll leave it.

Hmmmm..
Just try telling that to the natives!

[Bluebarry]

I'd still go with a VPN..

[Fght]

too much talking.
what is the bottom line?
i got confused....!!!!!!!
that it is not that simple at all???

don't act bad to people who want to understand something.
especially those youngsters who really think they know something and try to fix others' curiosity...

[Joe Schmoe]

The mods will probably be deleting this thread any minute now...

That seems to be the pattern lately with anything that doesn't fit into the pre-defined pigeon-holes.

[bobstro]

Have you seen my other post, Joe? Seems to have gone missing.

@Fght: I think the problem is that anonymity is not something that a beginner can reasonably hope to achieve given the current state of affairs. Any solution developed will soon be made obsolete in a never-ending arms race between underfunded privacy advocates/terrorists-formerly-known-as-citizens and the over funded state agencies self-appointed to watch their every move.

If your life or freedom depends on remaining anonymous, I would advise becoming an expert rather than waiting to be spoon fed. It's your butt.

[ShiftPlusOne]

that it is not that simple at all???

That's right. We may as well be talking about snail mail and the caesar cipher. This has been a problem long before computers were invented.

The mods will probably be deleting this thread any minute now...

That seems to be the pattern lately with anything that doesn't fit into the pre-defined pigeon-holes.

Oh yeah, given than the thread has been left alone all this time and a mod has participated, clearly that's the case. Way to fight the system.

The thread would only get locked if people like you derail it with irrelevant fud like that or if people can't be civil. If you don't like the way someone runs their house, leave.