News Privacy, The Digital Age, And You

[anthony]

Yup... Tor is solid, though like above comments, it also has pro's and con's when it comes to usability.

People have to think about what they want to really achieve, acknowledging that by being online you will never be absolutely private in the sense of your actions.

 

[Weemie]

yea, thing about anonymity and security is there's no 100% guarantee. even with tor like you said earlier, they do use 3rd party applications and you can allow 3rd party applications access (such as youtube), which will can reveal your real IP and computer info.

as for email addresses, since i see lots of people talking about it (not really a reply to any one person):

gmail is actually pretty secure. they run all emails through their server so the headers don't display your information, and they can't reveal that information without a subpoena. you can enable two-step verification which hooks into your phone, meaning that if someone types your password wrong a couple times or sign on from another device, they lock the account until you reactivate it with your phone. they advise you of any logins not from your IP address (outlook is actually surprisingly good about this too, i use tor when i'm doing my server work and we have an outlook email, and i always lock myself out of my own damn email.)

google isn't perf, as a big company you know they're interested in targeted demographics and advertising. their privacy policy states that they only share your personally identifiable information with your consent, but non-personally identifiable information can include your date of birth, gender and zip code which can according to this study identify up to 87% of americans.

even so, if you have an email account at all, you run the risk of this happening. any email provider (yahoo, aol, outlook, etc) is going to do this. at the very least, google doesn't pussyfoot around about it. their privacy policy explicitly states all of this. so it's up to you to fill in the rest of those gaps. i use a stupid pseudonym and keep all my location info fake.

as for spam, that doesn't really mean your email or your info is compromised. if your email address is literally anywhere on the internet, especially on a page that shows up in google results, bots will trawl that information and send out spam messages. if you enter your email address even into a site to register, if those email addresses are public, bots will trawl them. if the user registration pages aren't protected by robots.txt or password protected, bots will still trawl them.

but for a free email account gmail is your best bet. for the day to day it's extremely secure, and while you can't guarantee what google itself is gonna do, other people aren't going to have access to your info unless you are stupid and give it to them. hushmail is pretty good too, but they're limited-use emails i think.

 

[anthony]

gmail is actually pretty secure.

Yup... totally agree. Used it near since it was released, and like you said, two factor integration makes it simple. I use two factor on anything that allows it... hence why its here for all members to use to secure their accounts. Without that additional phone code, you can use simple and easy to remember usernames and passwords, relying on two factor security. Use complicated on those things that don't offer two factor.

The best thing nowadays is the ease of https... every website with any form field should use https, exactly for that issue of fields being monitored externally by third parties.

There is just sooooo much to know, its impossible to get it all out in one go.

 

[anonymous]

@anthony, I was thinking of this thread quite a bit, over the last few weeks... Do you still recommend Golden Frog? And in addition to a VPN, does a software like for example CCleaner also help to protect my privacy a bit more?

 

[anthony]

Cleaners don't protect your privacy, because once a cookie is on your computer, certain information is already being transmitted about you -- just not your name, address, phone... but statistical data. Cleaners are good for overall security to periodically clean out anything that may be tracking you, that you don't want tracking you. They also serve to clean all your browsers and such at once for tracking cookies and such.

Golden Frog would be my single choice for VPN, yes. There are lots out there, but Golden Frog are the only company still to own all their equipment, which means when they flush their DNS logs after content has existed for 30 days, all traces are gone of your browsing. Other companies claim privacy, no logging, etc, but that is all bullshit, because every DNS server is logging IP's and such to some degree, and you are connecting to them with your real IP in order to mask it.

Golden Frog also do not track and log your history, just your connection to them for 30 days containing your actual IP to protect them in the event you're using their service to do illegal stuff. They have the fastest VPN's available, and I've tried several, none come close to VyprVPN.

People think they need to jump countries or such, but that only slows your connection and thus browsing. Use the connection closest to you and that is all that is needed to provide privacy to your browsing of the web.

Basically, they're the most open and honest company on the web today who tells the truth about privacy and security, and their real capabilities for your privacy. No bullshit, which is what I like.