The ultimate guide to staying anonymous and protecting your privacy online

I am -unfortunately- far less educated in the field of computer... stuffs... than I would like to admit; Although, I greatly admire those who have the talent to do what I could only describe as "divine hacking skills."

Nevertheless, ATS has made me far too paranoid with all the information about Corporations, Governments, and lone-wolf hackers being able to do whatever they want, listen and read whatever they want, all through the screen I'm looking at right now.

One of my little tech-news sites i frequent has an article titled "The ultimate guide to staying anonymous and protecting your privacy online", and I want to know what all you experts on here think about it's information. I would really like to try and be as anonymous as possible, with also having a slightly-above-layman knowledge of what I'm doing. Here is what the article claims:

Now more than ever, your online privacy is under attack. Your ISP, advertisers, and governments around the world are increasingly interested in knowing exactly what you’re up to when you browse the web. Whether you’re a political activist or simply someone who hates the idea of third-parties snooping around, there are plenty of tools available to keep prying eyes off of your traffic.

In this post, I’m going to highlight 12 tools you can use to increase your online privacy. Some methods are more complicated than others, but if you’re serious about privacy, these tips will help you remain anonymous on the open Web. Of course, Internet security is a topic in and of itself, so you’re going to need to do some reading to remain thoroughly protected on all fronts. And remember, even the most careful among us are still vulnerable to imperfect technology.

Source

The 12 tools it discusses are:

1. The Onion Router (Tor)
   
2. VPN
   
3. DNS leak testing
   
4. "Virtual machines"
   
5. Blocking third-party cookies
   
6. Blocking location data
   
7. "Do not track" HTTP Header
   
8. Plug-in management
   
9. JavaScript blocking
   
10. Ghostery browser extension
    
11. HTTPS Everywhere browser extension
    
12. Panopticlick
    

So, wizards of the technological world. Help out the noobs here and guide us to a successful way to protect ourselves from the scary world of the internet. Please.

a reply to: Ghost147

I am computer security expert, not one of those you get for 20 an hour at a local IT company, I am way beyond that. I dealt with NSA protocols long before Snowden came out.

What you listed can work ONLY if you are an average user looking at average things.

If you are targeted, lets say you have a 9/11 blog or you email your friends all day long about chemtrails etc, those things you mentioned will NOT protect your identity nor your private information.

Every operating system aside from open source ones has backdoors built in. When I get a windows 7 PC to secure, it takes me 15 hours to isolate REDUNDANT backdoors.

It took me 4 hours to secure windows XP

Can you imagine win 8 9 10 11 infinity

It will become impossible for even professionals to do it.

VPN servers are littered with NSA servers, free and paid ones.

Wanna be safe from NSA, move to Russia.

Wanna be safe from Russia, move to USA

a reply to: Ghost147

You probably already know that anonymity regarding our networks has never really existed since there inception. Fact is that if someone or some agency are determined to gain access to your network and/or information there's really not a dam thing you can do to stop them.

Im quite worried about these semi-new router firmware malware variants considering current software, malware and virus protection does not even have anyway of scanning for them effectively. Essentially the only way i can come up with to know my firmware on the router is malware free is to periodically reflash. Any tips?

a reply to: andy06shake

Not true, they can be stopped but it requires an artist.

Not a geek

But a security artists, the same people NSA hires.

Truth is all that works for your local hacker . The reason it works is it makes it more difficult for them to hack your system . Thus they figure the ordinary person would not be worth that trouble.It can be done though given time.The only safe way is to unplug the system from everything and put it in a vault in Sweden and forget your number and combination.
As far as the government access goes, there is no way to protect from that.Back in the earliest days of computers anagreement was signed by computer , router , servers , operating system, etc. manufacturers with the government that states these companies must leave certain ports open for access. This was a well known fact back in my day and it still continues today.

A good package to help with your online privacy is a linux package called tails. It a complete Operating System that boots from a USB. A lot of the system settings help protect against any memory leakages and there are tools like tor and others that provide some privacy control.

a reply to: kwakakev

"boots from a USB"

My understanding is that USB has fundamental security issues that are unresolvable to date. So is it really a good idea to use a USB drive/stick to boot your OS?

www.wired.com...

a reply to: TorinoFer

please Mr wizard, tell me what backdoors took soooo long to fix. Seriously curious on what.

originally posted by: TorinoFer
a reply to: Ghost147

I am computer security expert, not one of those you get for 20 an hour at a local IT company, I am way beyond that. I dealt with NSA protocols long before Snowden came out.

What you listed can work ONLY if you are an average user looking at average things.

If you are targeted, lets say you have a 9/11 blog or you email your friends all day long about chemtrails etc, those things you mentioned will NOT protect your identity nor your private information.

Every operating system aside from open source ones has backdoors built in. When I get a windows 7 PC to secure, it takes me 15 hours to isolate REDUNDANT backdoors.

It took me 4 hours to secure windows XP

Can you imagine win 8 9 10 11 infinity

It will become impossible for even professionals to do it.

VPN servers are littered with NSA servers, free and paid ones.

Wanna be safe from NSA, move to Russia.

Wanna be safe from Russia, move to USA

It is incredible, companies hire graduates from some university and expect competence, expertise and innovation. Muh-huh.

As far as security goes, the back doors built into every system are open to be used by anyone, good guys and bad guys.

As long as you accept that there is no "security", you should be fine.

a reply to: andy06shake
The only problem with booting to USB with any OS is the amount of access on that USB key. They are solid state and have a limited number of times to be accessed before they start to degrade. With that being said , the access numbers for seek and write are generally very high nowadays.It is a good idea , but keep a backup of that key handy. This would be more for local security as if someone did not have the key , they could not boot the system (well , within a reasonable amount of time). I boot Windows 8.1 from USB..

At least someone is interested in what I say. I actually don't think I am important enough for them to focus on.

originally posted by: rickymouse
At least someone is interested in what I say. I actually don't think I am important enough for them to focus on.

Ditto. The security services have enough trouble keeping track of the nasty bar-stewards, to bother about me, regardless of how many times I write "dodgy" words. I seriously doubt anyone who posts on ATS is being actively observed by any government agency, unless you are posting from China, for example.

TBH, if government agencies visit ATS it's because they want a laugh.

If you start using TOR then you may actually attract their attention, and quite rightly so because TOR seems to be inhabited by scumbags and paedos.

a reply to: andy06shake

... So is it really a good idea to use a USB drive/stick to boot your OS?

Due to the nature of technology, attack vectors are everywhere as the digital frontier continues. USB does have a heap of possible weakness due to its ease of useability. Trying to find the right balance between security and useability is a long and difficult ongoing challenge.

In terms of booting from a USB stick, tails is an excellent choice because the whole OS only works in RAM and no hard drive access is required. Everything gets deleted at the end and it leaves no traces on the machine. For your undercover journalists, whistle blowers, double agents or anyone else in the danger zone, having your own channels of communication that can be used on any available machine has its advantages.

There are still risks, but for those looking for a heads up Tails is my recommendation. tails.boum.org...

originally posted by: paraphi
Ditto. The security services have enough trouble keeping track of the nasty bar-stewards, to bother about me, regardless of how many times I write "dodgy" words.

This just simply isn't true.

NSA is everywhere and because monitoring people has become so cheap and automated more and more people get sweeped into the monitoring net

Your cheap shot at Tor makes me suspicious too.

originally posted by: blackspirit
please Mr wizard, tell me what backdoors took soooo long to fix. Seriously curious on what.

For starters and just for starters, ever notice how windows 7 connects to Internet or intranet of any kind through a complex module before it sends it to your browser.

Compare that to win XP, or go to win 7 firewall and start reading fine print

Or set up one of those packet sniffers and start watching which servers windows is contacting as you browse the web

Have you ever found what else time synchronization with MS servers carries, I have.

This is THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

If you really want to know and learn, come to one of the international hacker expos, show genuine interest and someone will take you under their wing.

That's all, I am not interested in any kind of ego pis*ing match on forums, in case you were into that.

Good luck

originally posted by: kwakakev
A good package to help with your online privacy is a linux package called tails. It a complete Operating System that boots from a USB. A lot of the system settings help protect against any memory leakages and there are tools like tor and others that provide some privacy control.

This is kind of what I was thinking would be a viable option. Again, I'm not certain what bread-crumb-trails it could produce unintentionally.

a reply to: TorinoFer

Tor is a joke for security . just like a nutter running up and down the street waving their arms with a tee-shirt saying Navy on it
and expecting not to get noticed , but was the code stolen en.wikipedia.org...

www.fourwinds10.net...

It was just a movie

a reply to: stonerwilliam

I not saying Tor is secure

I was responding to that guy's cookie cutter attack on privacy. There are guys like that all over.