Google will print every question on meds u ask

[Junia]

There really is no such thing as privacy anymore. It's frightening to think that all communications, be it phone, laptop, email and who knows what else. Makes me wonder about my bathroom? Thank you Charon.

[Junia]

People trust TOR.  but i read that firefox was suing TOR as the FBI was hacking into the TOR accounts.

However, a new law was passed that all online communications may now be read without a warrant, I do believe.

We all need to be careful.  Very.

So, if I understood this, TOR is no longer a safe search engine? Once when I opened TOR, there was an option to search with "Torch" or "Tails" for highest level of security. The mention of dark web deterred me. I don't have any desire to go there. Do you know anything about those search engines? Not going to the dark side no matter how secure. And I agree, we need to err on the side of caution. Thank you for keeping us informed. I value my privacy, but not at the expense of my integrity.

[CryptsOfEternity]

If using, or even typing tor in a search engine to find where to download it, you better have a VPN connection right away, and not the first link you find while searching, hopefully not in google, for VPN service. Obviously subscribe to one that demands zero personal info, where 8 dollars worth of bitcoins gives you millitary grade 4096 bit encryption over openvpn. I'd recommend the one I'm using, but that muddies the water

It's very possible to not be flagged as anybody worth snooping on. It demands discipline and one can be content in the fact that since Russell Tice told us, NSA sucks up EVERYTHING, they don't have the processing power to make neat wikipedia-like pages of everyone on their intranet. If you got a file over there, it's probably because another agency, such as one in your own country which is not the US, that's how they get around the not-spying-on-your-people-officially, that's what Echelon was about, those 5 eyes, which are really 14 eyes. I will link to the huge PDF file I was speaking of that compares VPN's so one can make an informed choice. My service is outside the jurisdiction of these 14 countries and only logs connections when a server has problems, which out of the 450 I can choose from, is not really an issue and my payment is made through an encrypted email service paid with bitcoins, with bitcoins.

IPBlock in Linux works wonderfully well with ipfilterX, a subscription service, used to be free, the guys been doing analytics since 2000 and providing .dat and .p2p files for both IPBlock and Peerblock if still using Windows.

Yeah, it's getting tougher mostly in the US, Bush Jr first erased parts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and the Republicans have been randomly using scissors on it in the house since they took everything away from Obama's control. The guy wasn't perfect, but in these kind of social issues for the local populace, he preferred to let you have cake.

I wish i2p would get more development, at least it's clean and wasn't a Navy's Intelligence project from the start like Tor, which is another reason to look into why gettting a VPN before even looking for Tor. And if you do get it, do not download the direct easy link, find the "Hardened" version.

I consider myself lucky to be up there, looking south is scary :S But I'm not a nefarious person, those tools can help nefarious people, I use them mostly for principle. Every connection blocked by IPBlock (gui for iptables) using ipfilterX while I'm on a VPN makes me chuckle, you'll see how those bots work and how they probe and try to insert themselves just to test, which for me gives them a big "resolving............................." with never any response. That list is also very useful if torrenting from home, removes all the bad guys, MAFIAA, RIAA etc. and obviously gives one faster speed while your torrent client rejects all connections from the list, which gets updated every 3 days or so, it's a good investment for a whole year I gotta say, was using them when they were still free 10 years ago. I also block 30 or so nations entirely from lists on i-blocklist.org, no racism, just noticed/know how many scanners and botnets are in those countries. There is such lists yes that can block an IP from a country from talking to your computer. I would add the USA but then it would break everything ;p

Some resources :

https://www.privacytools.io/

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/..._the_best/

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/...mniscient/

That subreddit in general is very good. And you don't have to be a computer wiz, it might take some 3-4 hours to get it done, but after that you got a clear mind.

[Junia]

If using, or even typing tor in a search engine to find where to download it, you better have a VPN connection right away, and not the first link you find while searching, hopefully not in google, for VPN service. Obviously subscribe to one that demands zero personal info, where 8 dollars worth of bitcoins gives you millitary grade 4096 bit encryption over openvpn. I'd recommend the one I'm using, but that muddies the water

It's very possible to not be flagged as anybody worth snooping on. It demands discipline and one can be content in the fact that since Russell Tice told us, NSA sucks up EVERYTHING, they don't have the processing power to make neat wikipedia-like pages of everyone on their intranet. If you got a file over there, it's probably because another agency, such as one in your own country which is not the US, that's how they get around the not-spying-on-your-people-officially, that's what Echelon was about, those 5 eyes, which are really 14 eyes. I will link to the huge PDF file I was speaking of that compares VPN's so one can make an informed choice. My service is outside the jurisdiction of these 14 countries and only logs connections when a server has problems, which out of the 450 I can choose from, is not really an issue and my payment is made through an encrypted email service paid with bitcoins, with bitcoins.

IPBlock in Linux works wonderfully well with ipfilterX, a subscription service, used to be free, the guys been doing analytics since 2000 and providing .dat and .p2p files for both IPBlock and Peerblock if still using Windows.

Yeah, it's getting tougher mostly in the US, Bush Jr first erased parts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and the Republicans have been randomly using scissors on it in the house since they took everything away from Obama's control. The guy wasn't perfect, but in these kind of social issues for the local populace, he preferred to let you have cake.

I wish i2p would get more development, at least it's clean and wasn't a Navy's Intelligence project from the start like Tor, which is another reason to look into why gettting a VPN before even looking for Tor. And if you do get it, do not download the direct easy link, find the "Hardened" version.

I consider myself lucky to be up there, looking south is scary :S But I'm not a nefarious person, those tools can help nefarious people, I use them mostly for principle. Every connection blocked by IPBlock (gui for iptables) using ipfilterX while I'm on a VPN makes me chuckle, you'll see how those bots work and how they probe and try to insert themselves just to test, which for me gives them a big "resolving............................." with never any response. That list is also very useful if torrenting from home, removes all the bad guys, MAFIAA, RIAA etc. and obviously gives one faster speed while your torrent client rejects all connections from the list, which gets updated every 3 days or so, it's a good investment for a whole year I gotta say, was using them when they were still free 10 years ago. I also block 30 or so nations entirely from lists on i-blocklist.org, no racism, just noticed/know how many scanners and botnets are in those countries. There is such lists yes that can block an IP from a country from talking to your computer. I would add the USA but then it would break everything ;p

Some resources :

https://www.privacytools.io/

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/..._the_best/

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/...mniscient/

That subreddit in general is very good. And you don't have to be a computer wiz, it might take some 3-4 hours to get it done, but after that you got a clear mind.

Thanks for that info. I feel like a toddler on Wall Street when it comes to this information. So, it'll take awhile to research, digest and implement. You've definitely gotten me on the right track with food for thought. So glad to have you as a go to. You are definitely the tech expert

[barq2]

One thought about VPNs is that if I were the NSA, I'd want to tap all that traffic exiting the VPN server (at which point it is no longer protected by the VPN tunnel.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use VPN, and it hides your use from your ISP (which might be especially useful if using P2P or streaming video that is geolocked). But the agencies must focus on looking at what comes out of VPN servers. Some VPN services will now bounce your data around between their servers, so you connect to one in country A, and they pass it over to their server in country B. Like a VPN within a VPN. But like TOR, that does slow things up.

I think VPNs are excellent security in public places. I wouldn't log into my bank account from free coffee shop wifi without using a VPN!

[Junia]

Thanks so much barq! I feel like I'm in browser 101. So much to learn. So little time!

[CryptsOfEternity]

One thought about VPNs is that if I were the NSA, I'd want to tap all that traffic exiting the VPN server (at which point it is no longer protected by the VPN tunnel.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use VPN, and it hides your use from your ISP (which might be especially useful if using P2P or streaming video that is geolocked). But the agencies must focus on looking at what comes out of VPN servers. Some VPN services will now bounce your data around between their servers, so you connect to one in country A, and they pass it over to their server in country B. Like a VPN within a VPN. But like TOR, that does slow things up.

I think VPNs are excellent security in public places. I wouldn't log into my bank account from free coffee shop wifi without using a VPN!

Hah, of course not, your bank wants your real IP address. When I was still using Windows frequently, I had Bitdefender Antivirus suite...it's actually pretty good, Romanians are some of the best IT people (the product comes from Romania). It would have a seperate browser that was just a sandboxed browser for anything banking related.

Even having Mozilla Thunderbird in my notification area, managing all my email accounts, can be a problem when switching VPN server here and there, microsoft and google mail accounts will say people do bad things when it's all false positives and it's very annoying. I've made the problem go away, another great option for safety from snooping is using Sandboxie in Windows and Firejail in Linux. I use it for Firefox and Thunderbird, although Firejail-Tools detects VLC, Audacious and a few other programs it says it can run in a Sandbox, completely disconnected from your system. If in Firefox, it will only download to a sandboxed version of your Downloads folder and it will not let you save anything anywhere else.

Sandboxed browser is great, I first got to get it to work with Sandboxie in Windows XP x64....man I miss that one, best Windows there was...7 ultimate is close but is obviously more of a memory hog. Sandboxing is a good idea for those who do not want to mess with vpn's etc.

Anyway, about the topic at hand, Charon, you can definitely do like the other website I mention, you can see it when looking at "Source" in Firefox, and you can PM me and I'll tell you what forum it is, so you can have an idea how to get IOPlist off webcrawler's tentacles.

[Charon]

Thank u COE. My co admin handles that and i believe he feels we need some client attention now as we were private for so long. Our vendors need it.

Thank u though. Have a glorious day.

[Believe473]

Very interesting topic, so sad that pretty much all of our privacy is gone, I work in the medical field , and it's funny how protection they our over Hippa regs, but I guess we don't get that kind of protection. Typical. Thanks for the info

[Kat77]

It is sad. I noticed this a couple days ago when I saw a thread I started pop up while doing a google search. So creepy.