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A few of us have been taking these steps to limit our presence for years, and DO understand how. Tor is only one option, hot spot shield is another. My IP currently shows me in San Niguel, Ca.
Hot spot shield is a VPN - hence a single point of failure. If it was compromised or infiltrated - you would never know and would hence be exposing all your communications through one single point of access, making it easy for whoever is interested to see ALL your traffic. Tor, on the other hand, works in a completely different way. Its downside is that it can be painfully slow.
Hot spot shield is based in the United States - think about what that means (hint: secret national security letters). It is also run by a private company - meaning you have to put ALL your trust into them by default.
Not that there are no attacks on Tor. For example if your adversary has access to all the U.S. ISPs (like some 3-letter agencies do) and the same adversary operates a lot of fast Tor exit nodes, correlations can be drawn from putting the information together.
Anyways, it is not a bad idea to use any of these technologies, don't get me wrong. You just have to understand what their limitations are and what you are defending and who from. You also have to decide on the cost of this - if you have a fast connection that you can use to post to city-data but you want to use Tor to obscure your IP - it may slow down your connection significantly - is it worth the extra aggravation? Finally - is city-data.com http or https? If it is the former - is it really worth going through the trouble of obscuring your origin IP when anyone attached to your pipe can read the traffic anyways?
Wow sounds like a criminal.. so much efforts for privacy. Why would someone go to such extreme? It understandable if he's a public figure (movie star, ministers etc) but other than that?
This is the reason things are going down the toilet - the "if you are not doing anything bad, you have nothing to hide". Sadly, I think 50% of the population feels this way.
The expectation of privacy is one of the most basic tenets of a free society.
You expect privacy in your bedroom, no? After all, you are not doing anything bad, just having intimate moments with your loved one. So what if a few technicians are watching and recording for later perusal?
Hot spot shield is a VPN - hence a single point of failure. If it was compromised or infiltrated - you would never know and would hence be exposing all your communications through one single point of access, making it easy for whoever is interested to see ALL your traffic. Tor, on the other hand, works in a completely different way. Its downside is that it can be painfully slow.
Hot spot shield is based in the United States - think about what that means (hint: secret national security letters). It is also run by a private company - meaning you have to put ALL your trust into them by default.
Not that there are no attacks on Tor. For example if your adversary has access to all the U.S. ISPs (like some 3-letter agencies do) and the same adversary operates a lot of fast Tor exit nodes, correlations can be drawn from putting the information together.
Anyways, it is not a bad idea to use any of these technologies, don't get me wrong. You just have to understand what their limitations are and what you are defending and who from. You also have to decide on the cost of this - if you have a fast connection that you can use to post to city-data but you want to use Tor to obscure your IP - it may slow down your connection significantly - is it worth the extra aggravation? Finally - is city-data.com http or https? If it is the former - is it really worth going through the trouble of obscuring your origin IP when anyone attached to your pipe can read the traffic anyways?
You just wasted a lot of text on a subject that's already well understood, since this is all common knowledge and nothing new. I use Tor as well for some of my emails.
There are some really sad posts in this thread. Your friends don't know where you live? They don't sound like friends. I tend to extricate myself from people who lie and deceive to hide information that is not that important. Because what are you hiding from? Sounds like someone who is up to no good. Some of this sounds like serial killer behavior.
Either way, that is no way to live. In fact, spending so much energy to hide from everyone is just absurd. It sounds like some have mental disorders. Your life isn't that important and you aren't here for that long. If I met someone who paid for everything in cash, never buy from the same store, won't let anyone know where they live, etc. My first question is, how many bodies you have buried in your backyard?
wow.
There are some really sad posts in this thread. Your friends don't know where you live? They don't sound like friends. I tend to extricate myself from people who lie and deceive to hide information that is not that important. Because what are you hiding from? Sounds like someone who is up to no good. Some of this sounds like serial killer behavior.
Either way, that is no way to live. In fact, spending so much energy to hide from everyone is just absurd. It sounds like some have mental disorders. Your life isn't that important and you aren't here for that long. If I met someone who paid for everything in cash, never buy from the same store, won't let anyone know where they live, etc. My first question is, how many bodies you have buried in your backyard?
wow.
There are extremes on both ends - I agree with you on what you said above since you described on end of the extreme. The other extreme is people who think it is OK that we have NO privacy, that we are in every database, corporate or state owned, that you are being monitored, your information mined etc.
There are legal limits, for example, on what the government can do in this respect. Some of them are even outlined in the Constitution - like the need to have a warrant to monitor your communications. When it comes to private entities there are no constitutional limits but there are some legal limits (for example, a company employee at Verizon cannot listen to your private calls just for fun).
There are some really sad posts in this thread. Your friends don't know where you live? They don't sound like friends. I tend to extricate myself from people who lie and deceive to hide information that is not that important. Because what are you hiding from? Sounds like someone who is up to no good. Some of this sounds like serial killer behavior.
Either way, that is no way to live. In fact, spending so much energy to hide from everyone is just absurd. It sounds like some have mental disorders. Your life isn't that important and you aren't here for that long. If I met someone who paid for everything in cash, never buy from the same store, won't let anyone know where they live, etc. My first question is, how many bodies you have buried in your backyard?
wow.
Although it is certainly true that my life is not important in the whole big universal scheme of things, it IS important to me--otherwise, logically, I would have ended it a long time ago because I don't waste time on things that are not important to me.
What IS personally important to me, and my quality of life, is privacy. That's the kind of person I am and have always been since as far back as memory serves me. I see no reason to change that because someone else doesn't approve of my lifestyle. If that sounds like serial killer behavior to you, too bad.
I'll tell you what's absurd--denying others the right to a happy life (as long as it's peaceful and legal) because you don't approve of their lifestyle, priorities, or demeanor. We hear so much talk these days about "rights" for this and "rights" for that. Well? Let's practice what we preach so much of... rights. The right to live a private life if we so choose, whether you approve or not.
Oh... and, I pay cash because unless you knock me in the head and steal my money, you won't be getting it. You can't get it from Latvia, Uganda, Indonesia, or the south side of Chicago.
This is the reason things are going down the toilet - the "if you are not doing anything bad, you have nothing to hide". Sadly, I think 50% of the population feels this way.
The expectation of privacy is one of the most basic tenets of a free society.
You expect privacy in your bedroom, no? After all, you are not doing anything bad, just having intimate moments with your loved one. So what if a few technicians are watching and recording for later perusal?
Not quite sure if I got your nuance, I simply find the demonstration of that post too extreme to the point of over paranoid. Essentially everybody needs some form of privacy. I for one need pretty much of it and of course that applies while I'm changing in my bedroom too. But I don't go take up every technician courses there is available, you just be aware of who's coming into your room... If I crave for potato chips, I don't go to 10 different 711 stores to get them just because I want to keep my cravings private... unless a criminal in town has the same craving traits and you want to avoid being a suspect ?
There are some really sad posts in this thread. Your friends don't know where you live? They don't sound like friends. I tend to extricate myself from people who lie and deceive to hide information that is not that important. Because what are you hiding from? Sounds like someone who is up to no good. Some of this sounds like serial killer behavior.
Either way, that is no way to live. In fact, spending so much energy to hide from everyone is just absurd. It sounds like some have mental disorders. Your life isn't that important and you aren't here for that long. If I met someone who paid for everything in cash, never buy from the same store, won't let anyone know where they live, etc. My first question is, how many bodies you have buried in your backyard?
wow.
To answer your last question..............a search warrant will be needed before they are allowed to dig
If I crave for potato chips, I don't go to 10 different 711 stores to get them just because I want to keep my cravings private...
You could make them yourself too
I pretty much stayed off this thread because for one thing, it violates OP-SEC to disclose your methods or what you do to stay off the radar.
For me, outside of my computer for this board and some work at home, I don't do much of anything that would put the evil eye on my activites.
I use cash because it helps me with my budget. If I don't have it in my wallet, I don't buy.
Outside of the inevitable taxes and such, I don't have much dealing with the government.
Basically, if I don't make it myself or grow it myself, I can usually trade from other individuals. Garage sales are a great place to shop.
I don't go in for a lot of electronic hardware, use a pre paid cell because I don't use it much anyway so it makes sense to only pay for what I use so 200 minutes usually lasts me over 3 months.
I use a gift card for anything I buy online so that no-one has access to my bank accounts, and I don't have a credit card, so even if they get my card number, it is only good for the little bit I put on it.
I do watch for identity theft with a service simply because someone tried it on me one time.
I live in a small town, part of the time, but while my neighbors know me and know where I am, only a few friends and family normally visit, so again, no big deal.
Very few people in my daily life know much about me outside of what I deal with them directly on.
I'm not really secretive, I just have no reason to impart a lot of information to people with no need to know.
In my case, I don't have to go to great lengths to avoid suspicion, I just do my thing and it has little if any interest to anyone around me. If you look fairly normal and blend in, nobody cares who you are or what you do. If you differ from the norm is when people start asking questions.
I have had the same house for 20 years, I have talked to the next door neighbor once in that time. My situation works fine by me.
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