"Anonymity" & the Internet' - help?

[digininja]

Don't forget, the more complexity you put into all this the more places there are for things to go wrong, more chance of someone picking you up for doing something fishy and the more bits of evidence to be tied together by investigators.

[digip]

Don't forget, the more complexity you put into all this the more places there are for things to go wrong, more chance of someone picking you up for doing something fishy and the more bits of evidence to be tied together by investigators.

Conversely, the more data, the more noise. if you are hopping through different nodes you own which all have user traffic on the same routers, then the investigators need to be able to differentiate between home users and your use. Put these in the hands of coffee shop owners or other high volume traffic locations, ie: businesses, free hotspots, hotels, airports, hospitals, etc, you have the masking being done in part just by the other traffic on the same devices. if one node goes down, you reroute over the others. kind of like a bot net, but for tunneling purposes alone which is all done on the routers vs say a bot net that runs on an IRC server or web server. Just thinking in terms of what ifs and not so much this is how you do it since the deployment of such a thing is pretty grandiose.

[foofoolame]

so what are peoples normal routines for the internet? normal use and how they connect to the internet?

[digip]

so what are peoples normal routines for the internet? normal use and how they connect to the internet?

.. but that would be private to each person ;)

Everyones needs are different, and everyones setup tailored to their needs. if asking how to use something specific or setup something, we can discuss, but if asking what we use personally, that's up to the individual if they want to share. I tend to be more on the tin foil hat side of the fence and use different methods of switching my IP on a regular basis using a combination of tunnels and vpns but that only keeps me secure from local traffic and to my exit node. After that my traffic is at the mercy of my exit, for which I'm still logging into web sites and such, so accounts are tied to me at some level, but I am not doing anything that I worry about if needed to be tracked back to. if I was, I wouldn't be doing it from home and would probably take additional steps a mentioned previously throughout this thread, for which one's life would probably become pretty dismal in the process since this means not being able to speak to anyone as yourself nor use any of your accounts and all surfing habits changed completely - a task not easily maintained.

[digininja]

My usual set up is:

Me -> Internet

I don't feel I need any anonymity services and know that I've not got the patience to use them properly even if I had them.

The only time I do VPN is when I'm on an untrusted network and then I'll VPN to one of my servers before accessing anything and I only tend to turn that on when I know I'm going to be doing things which may reveal sensitive information. If I just connect to check the news and weather I wouldn't bother.

I've got friends who work, and worked, in GCHQ and I know for a fact that if they decided to come after me then there is absolutely nothing I could do about it. For levels of adversary below that, I think the chance of attack is slim enough that I'm happy to risk it and I have enough other measures in place to protect myself in the rare situation I do come up against someone.

[cooper]

My normal setup is, like digininja, Me -> Internet

As far as I can tell my online activities are by no means illegal, save for perhaps a torrent download here or there for which, here in .nl, not a single end-user has ever been arrested or served with legal documents. I mostly torrent music from which the artist isn't making a dime anyway, the legal access options are WAY limited for my particular taste in music and I go to a lot of concerts where I also regularly buy t-shirts and such. While technically illegal, morally I feel I'm being nicer than most. Should 'they' choose to come after me, I'm willing to make my case and accept any consequences.

If I did decide to knowingly do something explicitly nefarious that I fear might lead back to me, I'd use a separate machine and connect to the internet using the local mall's WIFI. I live in a pretty built-up area and the free WIFI providing mall is but a stones throw away. With a decent enough antenna it should be WELL within reach. Since there are residences literally built on top of the mall, good luck following its use back to me. Alternatively, I could hack any number of nearby APs and in many cases wouldn't even need to hack since, yes, WEP is still kinda common around here. Lots of elderly people who had a tech over to install things and are actively trying not to change anything after this. There's a music venue nearby that provides wifi to the local staff and that signal is accessible from my home using my phone. I used to volunteer there years ago so I know the password (but it's VERY guessable) plus I know many volunteers there gave out that password to the regular visitors. To make things more interesting, the municipal government pulled their funding so the place has been closed for the last year and a half but that wifi's still up and active. Lastly many businesses around here offer free wifi to its customers using passwords that rarely if ever change. When one does change you just go there for a meal and ask the waitress. You'll be set for a few more months at the minor inconvenience of eating out one time.

So yeah. In general if I want to get online pretty much invisibly I can do so from the comfort of my home using any of the myriad of wifi APs that either accidentally or explicitly invite complete strangers to use them, meaning that if someone managed to track me it would have to have been because I disclosed something identifying about myself rather than by someone managing to pinpoint my network route and linking that to a paying subscriber to vilify.

[foofoolame]

ty to all, i wasnt trying to get "personal info" just more knowledge on how to improve my experience/time on the internet securely.