Anonymous Maximus - What would you do?

[Trogdor]

Awesome. You said your major is computer science?

[BlackWasp]

Awesome. You said your major is computer science?

Yes. I'm in a computer science major and am starting this fall. I'm trying to get studied up on it before I show up so I can learn as much as possible.

I used to be really heavily involved with this kind of stuff when I was younger, but I never kept up with it because I was busy doing other things (chasing girls, smoking weed, etc.). I grew up a bit and decided it was time to come back to it seeing as it's such a lucrative field.

[Trogdor]

Haha you just described my life, but I'm a little younger.

[BlackWasp]

Haha you just described my life, but I'm a little younger.

Lol, great minds think alike.

Anyway, the thing is that I'm getting serious mainly about anonymity because I'm tired of having anxiety throughout the day due to the fact that literally my entire life is online for anyone with access to exploit.

[Trogdor]

Privacy and anonymity are extremely important, even if you don't think you need it. You just made me think of tracking ads and cookies as another threat to anonymity.

[iTpHo3NiX]

When it comes to tracking cookies you can thank search engine optimization and analytics. Knowing what customers and potential customers want is what drives those cookies. Companies want to know what you're looking at and what you're doing so they can sell you what you're looking at. How many times have you gone to amazon and searched for a pocket pussy and then every other ad on every website is a pocket pussy. It's like brain Blocks in that aspect where if you see it all the time, subconsciously that's all you think about. Pocket pussies, pocket pussies everywhere.

[Trogdor]

Haha thats pretty descriptive of me

[sh4d0w_w4tch]

I don't try to be anonymous from the feds.  It's too much work and they'll get you eventually if you use the same identity.  I don't think they know who I am because they would need to send orders to certain people.  The NSA might if their data collection is as massive as people say it is.  I made up an identity and used it for registering everything.  This way somebody can't get your information just by sending a threatening legal letter to your host or hacking one of your accounts.  I care more about privacy from skids then hackers because teenagers who think they're hacker badasses are more likely to cause you serious short term trouble.  Hackers can cause you much worse long term trouble.  Unless you go after their family or do something really personal, an older man or woman with a real job isn't going to care.  There are bad apples in any age group.

You said that you are interested in anonymity "for it's own sake."  If that's your motive then you won't observe OpSec for very long.  It's a chore to maintain and you won't keep it going.  I like having an alter ego and an identity that only exists online but it's extremely restricting if I want to maintain proper anonymity.  There are certain things that I can't talk about because if one of my friends posted on Facebook that I work with Linux, use X, Y, and Z programming languages, and A, B, and C interests, then my cover is blown.  Web pages have already been written about what I do with computers.  On just this one topic I have to be careful what I talk about.  Anonymity is an all or nothing game.  You only need to fuck up once.

[BlackWasp]

I don't try to be anonymous from the feds.  It's too much work and they'll get you eventually if you use the same identity.  I don't think they know who I am because they would need to send orders to certain people.  The NSA might if their data collection is as massive as people say it is.  I made up an identity and used it for registering everything.  This way somebody can't get your information just by sending a threatening legal letter to your host or hacking one of your accounts.  I care more about privacy from skids then hackers because teenagers who think they're hacker badasses are more likely to cause you serious short term trouble.  Hackers can cause you much worse long term trouble.  Unless you go after their family or do something really personal, an older man or woman with a real job isn't going to care.  There are bad apples in any age group.

You said that you are interested in anonymity "for it's own sake."  If that's your motive then you won't observe OpSec for very long.  It's a chore to maintain and you won't keep it going.  I like having an alter ego and an identity that only exists online but it's extremely restricting if I want to maintain proper anonymity.  There are certain things that I can't talk about because if one of my friends posted on Facebook that I work with Linux, use X, Y, and Z programming languages, and A, B, and C interests, then my cover is blown.  Web pages have already been written about what I do with computers.  On just this one topic I have to be careful what I talk about.  Anonymity is an all or nothing game.  You only need to fuck up once.

When I say anonymity for it's own sake, I'm not just talking about doing it for shits and giggles. I genuinely feel a certain degree of anxiety throughout the day due to the fact that my entire life is online. Think about it - all it takes is one crooked cop, one person who knows what they're doing, or one script kiddie and so many elements of my life are there for the taking. I'm tired of it and want to do something about it.

Even when you think about how much spying the federal government does, you can easily screw up your life just by accidently clicking on the wrong stuff. Sure, everyone says that they're only going to waste resources going after the bad guys, but what's the standard of what makes you a bad guy? How many controversial datagrams do you need to send before an investigation is justified? Do they have a file on BlackWasp right now just because I'm posting on this website? What if you accidently visited a webpage with illegal content, or worse, downloaded mislabeled illegal content? Are they watching you then? What if you did it more than once? Do they trace your IP and start investigating? I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this, but some of the laws on the books for downloading software and pirating music deal greater consequences than looking at child pornography (you can tell who makes the rules in this country). My point being, if you download music or software - does that make you enough of a bad guy to justify individual attention? What if you have a cotroversial opinion? What if you buy a lot of books on something controversial through amazon?

I'm not saying that I do any of that stuff, but it's worth asking where the line is drawn. When I was growing up, I was part of a community that encouraged everyone to question everything, read whatever you want, learn as much as you can, and the foundational axiom was that knowledge was free. Now I live in a world where I'm always wondering if my reading or surfing habits are enough to justify someone always looking over my shoulder, and that's not something I want.

So I'm taking privacy a little more seriously.

[Trogdor]

@BlackWasp your response made more sense to me than anything I have read this entire week.

[0E 800]

Assume there are multiple dimensions, parallel universes, spirits, demons, angels, a magical veil that shrouds your vision from the truth. Reality is a giant mystery that no one has solved, the illusion of the material world has so many distractions, we convince ourselves to focus on just staying alive and how we relate to everyone else who is not us.

Assume your life is not your own, that you are an actor and cannot escape your script in life. You can only control how you feel, and even that is difficult at times.

So don't share your dream, don't share your wishes, don't share your love, don't share what you hold most dear; there is always something out there that's going to reduce you to nothing, to make you fail, to see if you stay down or get back up again.

Your worst enemy in staying anonymous is yourself, and the daemons..


 

[sh4d0w_w4tch]

When I say anonymity for it's own sake, I'm not just talking about doing it for shits and giggles. I genuinely feel a certain degree of anxiety throughout the day due to the fact that my entire life is online. Think about it - all it takes is one crooked cop, one person who knows what they're doing, or one script kiddie and so many elements of my life are there for the taking. I'm tired of it and want to do something about it.

Even when you think about how much spying the federal government does, you can easily screw up your life just by accidently clicking on the wrong stuff. Sure, everyone says that they're only going to waste resources going after the bad guys, but what's the standard of what makes you a bad guy? How many controversial datagrams do you need to send before an investigation is justified? Do they have a file on BlackWasp right now just because I'm posting on this website? What if you accidently visited a webpage with illegal content, or worse, downloaded mislabeled illegal content? Are they watching you then? What if you did it more than once? Do they trace your IP and start investigating? I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this, but some of the laws on the books for downloading software and pirating music deal greater consequences than looking at child pornography (you can tell who makes the rules in this country). My point being, if you download music or software - does that make you enough of a bad guy to justify individual attention? What if you have a cotroversial opinion? What if you buy a lot of books on something controversial through amazon?

I'm not saying that I do any of that stuff, but it's worth asking where the line is drawn. When I was growing up, I was part of a community that encouraged everyone to question everything, read whatever you want, learn as much as you can, and the foundational axiom was that knowledge was free. Now I live in a world where I'm always wondering if my reading or surfing habits are enough to justify someone always looking over my shoulder, and that's not something I want.

So I'm taking privacy a little more seriously.

If you want to be anonymous from law enforcement then you're going to need to do so much work that it won't be practical.  You can't drive somewhere just to use the internet.  A lot of the advice posted here has stupid holes in it.  A burner hotspot will track your location like a phone, so you need to keep driving away to just have it turned on.  Staying anonymous from the people on the internet is a wise decision because you don't know when and what would make you a target.  I've gone after people who fucked with my friends, and all of them have had stupid flaws that allowed me to find them.  None of my friends thought they were doing anything that would make them a target.

[Trogdor]

I don't think these situations are comparable as sh4d0w_w4tch is talking about anonymity from just hackers, while BlackWasp is talking about anonymity from the gubmint. I think they are both valid arguments in their own rights, though.

[BlackWasp]

If you want to be anonymous from law enforcement then you're going to need to do so much work that it won't be practical.  You can't drive somewhere just to use the internet.  A lot of the advice posted here has stupid holes in it.  A burner hotspot will track your location like a phone, so you need to keep driving away to just have it turned on.  Staying anonymous from the people on the internet is a wise decision because you don't know when and what would make you a target.  I've gone after people who fucked with my friends, and all of them have had stupid flaws that allowed me to find them.  None of my friends thought they were doing anything that would make them a target.

Your dismissive attitude would be justified if you knew what you were talking about, but what you're saying isn't true. If I have a computer and am hitting a wifi hotspot, they can't "track your location like a phone." Phones are tracked through triangulation of several towers at once, whereas a wifi hotspot is a single modem and router. At best they might be able to calculate your distance from the actual modem due to the amount of packets your getting, but even that's variable to so many different things that it couldn't be tracked reliably.

Otherwise, the wisdom of not sharing information about yourself is appreciated, but that's not advice I actually needed from anybody. I've never been afraid of someone "doxing" me, because it's ultimately a pretentious dysphemism for "I don't understand NetSec and revealed enough information for someone with enough time to google me." I don't want to come off as a jerk, because I understand it's something worth mentioning in any conversation about anonymitiy (especially to a new person on the forum), but if you're still at the level of not having the self control to not tell personal stories and reveal other information about yourself, then VPNs and Proxy-Chains mean jack shit.

[khofo]

...but if you're still at the level of not having the self control to not tell personal stories and reveal other information about yourself, then VPNs and Proxy-Chains mean jack shit.

Humans tend to make mistakes, that' why humans are the weakest link, and whatever your level is you should worry about errors from your side being leet or a toral noob, human error has the same impact. And that's very true for anonymity, most high profile "hackers" were catched because of human error, like soemone said saying how's the weather were u are is compromising, also your writing type, typos, profile picture all of this help to profile u. This isnwhy most of the "big hacks" interpreters were catched due to this and not due to misconfigured VPN, WiFi Hotspot or proxychains.
So human behaviour is key and always always worth mentioning, and 100% that u are subject to it too, saying that  human error is not a variable for u is a huge mistake