[access-uk] how to protect your privacy.
- From: Colin Howard <colin@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:15:44 +0100
** This article is followed by my reply **
From: "Tuvix" <tuvix@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 22:49:26 -0400
how to protect your privacy.
Updated 26 July 2012 - 20:18 by Chiron
Physical link addresses inserted by Dan Thompson
These days it often feels like online privacy is an unattainable illusion.
While it is true that it's impossible to be entirely anonymous, while online
there are many things you can do to greatly increase your privacy. I'm not
recommending that you use all of the methods I discuss in this article, and
it's by no means meant to be a comprehensive list of all possible options.
This article is supposed to present you with some general strategies to
protect your online privacy. Please pick and choose the methods that work
best for you.
How to Stay Safe Online
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-stay-safe-while-online.htm-0
Also, you should be aware that protecting your online privacy also requires
that you keep your computer safe from many other types of online dangers.
Because of that I would also suggest that you read through my article about
How to Stay Safe While Online.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-tell-if-website-dangerous.htm
1. Basic Strategies\
A) Make Sure Site Is Safe Before Sharing Information
The truth about the internet is that often you can't be sure who people
really are or who's actually running the site you're on. A general rule of
thumb is that if you don't trust the site don't give them any personally
identifiable information. This includes your real name, email address,
credit card number, etc. To make sure the site you're considering visiting
isn't a security or privacy risk you should read my article about How to
Tell If A Website Is Dangerous. This can be found at the link below.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-tell-if-website-dangerous.htm
B) Protect Your Wireless Connection From Hidden Dangers
Also, if you're connecting to the internet via a wireless connection you
need to make sure that the connection is password protected. If possible use
WPA type encryption, as this is very strong, and choose a password that
would be very difficult for anyone else to guess. This will help prevent
your browsing data from being spied on and, even more importantly, will help
to protect your computer from being hacked. Once a hacker has breached your
network defenses it becomes much easier for them to now try to get into your
computer. Also, if you don't encrypt your wireless connection, and someone
else uses it to do something illegal, it's possible for you to be held
responsible for their actions.
C) Make Sure Any Online Accounts Are Properly Configured For Optimum Privacy
Also, please see the lists of different accounts mentioned on the page shown
below. Clicking on one will lead you to a tutorial which will walk you
through exactly what you need to do in order to make sure that your account
is locked down tight. And yes, for those of you who are wondering, this site
does include tutorials for facebook, gMail, and many others,..
https://www.priveazy.com/#!/Websites
D) Check Out This Site With Numerous Easy To Follow Privacy Tutorials For
Further Reading
https://www.priveazy.com/
Priveazy is a very good website which covers the basics of online privacy
and safety. It contains quizes in different categories to see how informed
you actually are and then provides lessons which can guide you towards a
better understanding. It's a very good place to start to really get a good
understanding of online privacy. However, after taking a few of these quizes
it will require you to create an account with them. This account is free and
I would strongly recommend you doing this if you really want to understand
online privacy.
E) If You Wish Follow This Advice To Remove Your Information From Most
People Search Databases
Also, if you want to remove your information from most of the people search
databases on the internet you can follow the advice given on the page link
given below. The information on how to do this is actually provided by a
company which offers to do it for you for a charge, but if you like you can
also do it yourself for free.
http://abine.com/optouts.php
2. Increase Privacy Of Your Browser:
Nearly all privacy threats enter your computer through your browser. Thus,
protecting your browser from these privacy threats is a very important part
of protecting your online privacy. For this please read the article I wrote
about How to Harden Your Browser Against Malware and Privacy Concerns. Pay
special attention to the parts that are concerned mainly with protecting
your online privacy, but also realize that securing your computer against
malware and other threats also plays a large role in protecting this
privacy. Thus, I would really recommend that you read the entire article.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-harden-your-browser-against-malware-and-privacy-concerns.htm
3. Use a Virtual Private Network To Hide Your IP Address:
A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, securely tunnels all of the connections
from your computer directly to the site that you're communicating with. Thus
your connection is secure and nobody can spy on what you're doing. Also, the
site you're communicating with doesn't see your real IP address. It only
sees the one that the VPN assigned you, which generally cannot be traced
back to you. In addition all VPN's will hide your geographic location and
the name of your Internet Service provider. Thus it should become very
difficult for anyone to track you. A review of some of the best free VPN's
is given at the link provided below.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-anonymous-surfing-service.htm
Currently my favorite to use is HotSpot Shield.
http://www.hotspotshield.com/
This does place an ad at the top of every page you visit. However, if you
use adblocking software then you won't even see the ad. Also, this program
does not store your IP address or any other permanent identifieres. However,
it does put a cookie on your computer, which you can block by using the
methods below. Also, they do record some non-identifiable information for
advertising purposes. That said, the connection is very fast and I am not
aware of any limits on the amount of traffic you can tunnel through it. More
information can be found at the link below.
http://www.hotspotshield.com/privacy.php
However, with this service https connections are not anonymized, as they
connect directly from your computer to the secured web site. In general
these are not a privacy issue. Sadly, HotSpot Shield does not work well with
torrents.
One VPN, which does work well with torrents, is CyberGhost. It can be found
at the link below.
In fact the torrent speed is not even slowed down significantly, as compared
with an unsecured connection. Although this VPN does require registration
you are not required to supply them with personally identifiable
information. However, with this service https connections are also not
anonymized, as they connect directly from your computer to the secured web
site. In general these are not a privacy issue. Also, this VPN only allows
free users to use it to transfer 1GB of information per month. That said,
that amount should be sufficient for most users. A problem is that it
appears that free users can only use this service for 6 hours at a time
before it will automatically disconnect. That said, the default action for
this program is to block all internet connections in the case of a loss of
connection, so this should not be a large problem. Also, this service will
not anonymize any emails sent via SMTP.
http://cyberghostvpn.com/en/surf-anonym.html
4. Use Peerblock To Prevent Known Risks From Even Seeing Your Computer:
Recommended only for more advanced users
Peerblock can be downloaded from this site.
It monitors all IP connections and blocks all connections that are in its
lists of known unwanted sites. It comes with default block lists and allows
you to easily download more lists. It even comes with a list of known
anti-P2P sites that you can select so that your computer will not
communicate with them. All of these lists will be automatically updated each
time you open the program. You can also create custom lists, either for
blocking or unblocking. allowing sites. You can read more about Peerblock
in these FAQ's. As long as you don't use too many lists your connection
speed shouldn't decrease noticeably when it's enabled. Peerblock can greatly
increase your level of privacy, but this comes at a price. Using this
program will cause many of the sites you regularly visit to not work
correctly.
http://www.peerblock.com/releases
http://www.peerblock.com/releases
. It monitors all IP connections and blocks all connections that are in its
lists of known unwanted sites. It comes with default block lists and allows
you to easily download more lists. It even comes with a list of known
anti-P2P sites that you can select so that your computer will not
communicate with them. All of these lists will be automatically updated each
time you open the program. You can also create custom lists, either for
blocking or allowing sites. You can read more about Peerblock in these
FAQ'S
found at the link below.
http://www.peerblock.com/docs/faq
Thus you will need to either temporarily disable Peerblock, when privacy
concerns are not as critical, or create a white-list of allowed sites.
Personally, I do create a white- list. I have a custom list of sites I want
to be allowed. The way I would recommend creating this is by going to the
sites you visit regularly and see if important aspects of them are blocked.
If they are, and you trust the site, you can select the option to allow the
site for 15 minutes for one of the blocked connections. I always start with
the one at the bottom of the list, assuming you had just cleared the log
before going to the site. After temporarily allowing a single connection,
and waiting for about 5 seconds, reload the page. If the site now loads fine
then you can select the option to allow that connection permanently. This
way the site will always work, even when Peerblock is active.
I'd advise using them all. The only downside you could encounter is that
your browsing speed could decrease.
If you find that this is the case then you should remove some of them from
your arsenal.
** Reply sent by me **
In this article reference is made to making the i.p unseeable, does this
mean, for instance, people in the states can, by this method, access, say,
tv programs on the BBC IPlayer which, at present, are only available in the
UK? Would it work in reverse allowing, for instance, us to download
material from State side sites not available to us, or to purchase items
either way?
I suspect if an i.p address cannot geographically be determined, then the
transaction will be blocked. If, however, the i.p can be "modified" to make
the site believe a person is within the jurisdiction of an area allowed,
then great news! let's know how to set it up and use this kind of access.
Colin Howard, living near Southampton in Southern
England.
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