Tag: ANONYMITY

Using the Tor network of virtual tunnels, TorChat is a small, portable and open-source IM client that allows for completely anonymous and secure communications and file sharing. It works on both Windows and Linux. If you're on Windows, all you have to do is download, unzip, and run torchat.exe. It will automatically connect to the Tor network -- which will take a few minutes -- but then it ...

Say what you will about Sweden's Pirate Party, but they certainly have some kick-ass ideas about protecting the rights of Internet users. Recently the Party announced that they would begin operating the Pirate Bay from within Swedish Parliament -- where they have immunity from prosecution for actions taken as part of their political mandate. Now they're preparing to offer Swedish residents ...

Have you ever wished there was somewhere safe, away from prying eyes, that you could ask a question about the opposite sex? I mean, what's the internet good for if not anonymous communications? Okay, don't answer that. Leftos is a site dedicated to encouraging discussions on gender-related topics, with categories like being single, dating, sex, relationships, marriage, and divorce. Leftos stands ...

It was only a matter of time before the P2P community came up with some workable options for anonymizing our activities. Sure, Tor has been able to do it for quite some time, but torrenting is very taxing on the network and transfers can be painfully slow. Recently, however, three new services have appeared that could provide the privacy protection we've been waiting for. iPredator VPN - We've ...

There was a time, long ago, when chatting with strangers was one of the more impressive things you could do online. Things have changed since the days of 14.4 baud modems ... or have they? Now, rather than using IRC to meet new friends that you can actually stay in contact with if you so choose, a recently released site called Omegle created by an 18 year-old high school senior named Leif ...

It's no April Fools' prank. On April 1st - the same day that Sweden's Draconian new intellectual property legislation (IPRED) goes into effect - the Pirate Bay will debut their new IPREDATOR VPN service. Where IPRED aims to make it easier for copyright holders to get their hands on ISP log files to investigate suspected transgressors. With IPREDATOR, a user can give "the man" a swift kick in his ...

There are plenty of ways to utilize the Tor network for a little added browsing privacy - like OperaTor, for example. If you'd prefer a single anonymity solution that can handle any browser, portable or not, give PortableTor a try. It's Tor, Vidalia (a GUI frontend for Tor), and Privoxy in a single, portable package. All you need to do is launch PortableTor and edit your browser's proxy settings ...

Concerns about what Google Chrome does with user data already spawned Iron, a browser based on the Chromium source code that strips various features like error and crash reporting, as well as the unique user identifier assigned to each install. If you'd prefer to run Google's version of the browser but are still concerned about your privacy, you can also download and run UnChrome. It's a free ...

If you're looking for a little anonymity and security when signing up for download links or invite codes, a disposable email service is a good option. Instead of providing one of your working email addresses, just grab a meaningless temporary one from any of these sites and keep your identity hidden. These five sites all provide RSS feeds for your address, which is handy. No need to return to the ...

With similar features already built in to Safari, IE8, and Google Chrome, the Mozilla gang is once again looking to add private browsing to Firefox. While the Stealther addon can already provide this functionality, FIrefox is looking to implement it in the 3.1 release before year's end. The goal will be to store as much data from private browsing sessions as possible in memory to avoid writing to ...

Anyone who has gained super powers through radiation exposure, cosmic rays, or scientific experimentation gone wrong knows how painfully difficult it can be to conceal your identity after the fact. Fortunately, there's a web site that will help you make the process much, much simpler. Fake Name Generator does so much more than what its moniker implies. Not only will it create a (usually) ...

I'm a big fan of services that help me keep spam out of my inbox, and I'm an even bigger fan of services that make it dead easy like 2 Prong. Like many, many other services 2 Prong gives you disposable email addresses that you can use when registering for web sites that require a valid email address and clicking on an emailed validation link. What makes 2 Prong special is that it reduces this to a ...

TrackMeNot is a Firefox extension designed by two NYU computer science researchers to run in the background and periodically send search requests to popular search engines and portals like AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. Why would you want to do that? A couple of reasons. First, just for the fun of screwing with their heads. More importantly, though, when the companies release their search records ...

Wired News is running an article about Anonym.OS, a project of kaos.theory security research that aims to bring an easy, anonymizing Internet experience to the masses. Anonym.OS is an OpenBSD live CD and when you put it into any PC, you're "presented with a text based wizard-style list of questions to answer, one at a time, with defaults that will work for most users. Within a few moments, a ...