How do you stay anonymous?

For those who are paranoid about the NSA and online anonymity - how do you stay anonymous?

I am using Cyber Ghost, Chrome with third party cookies and location tracking off, and Chrome Ghostery app, blocking everything. Everything is free so far, and hopefully will stay that way. I am interested in hearing what yall use.

 

I'm afraid you don't really stay anonymous.
Your IP is readily traceable for one thing, and even if you do use an IP obfuscator, your ISP can relatively easily track you (you are after all going through them to hook up online).
Your online transactions, purchases, all traceable.

You were in the system the moment you were probably born and eventually, that data will be digitized for better tracking, etc.

Anonymity online is something of a wishful thinking.

Also, google seems to be able to track you regardless of the location tracking being off.
If you use google or any of their services, chances are, their algorithms are able to tell its you.

Adblock, CyberGhost and Chrome Ghostery can probably block third parties to a marginal degree, but the more you use the Internet, the more you basically reveal of yourself.

 

Unfortunately, cookieless tracking is becoming the norm (Google does it). Perhaps those apps are effective though, try running this test using your setup:
Panopticlick - How Unique Is Your Browser?

Mine:

Which is, of course, the worst result possible ...

 

Anonymity online is a ideal, you can't touch it, but you can deceive, to look like somebody else, even this work until some point...

 

Not using farcebook is a good start :O)

 

Don't use the internet....

 

There is no perfect solution, because every one of them has its own good and bad sides.

Tor Browser is near the perfect solution if you wanna stay anonymous on the internet, but keep that in mind one VERY IMPORTANT thing: Tor bounces your connection via three (by default) relays (entry, middle and exit), and while communication with every one of them is encrypted with Diffie-Hellman's cryptosystem, the last one (exit relay) decrypts everything before sending it to his final destination (i.e. off the tor network).

Yet, again, there is no perfect solution. Tor is very good if you wanna maintain some decent level of online anonymity, but as you can see it has his own drawbacks...

Maybe the perfect solution is already mentioned - do not use internet.

 

1. Use only a reputable Off-Shore VPN that allows Tor over VPN. (PM me for more details...)
2. Use Firefox w/ reputable add-ons and configure to never remember browser history etc... (Prevent using anything Google, including Chrome. Bad news...)
3. Tor Browser. (Though it's rumored that anyone using Tor throws a yellow flag to the three letter terds..after all they invented it...)
4. Don't use FB.
5. Don't use FB.
6. Limit anything Google as much as you can.
7. Don't use GMAIL. (PM me...)
8. Don't use Yahoo.
9. Tape over your webcam on your laptop. Sounds funny, but you (generally speaking) have no idea....
10. Don't use anything Google.

 

I don't. Personally, I maintain some degree of anonimity to prevent amateurs from tracing me, and avoid any direct connections between internet personalities and real identities. Government people with infinite resources will obviously know - but in all honesty I believe I do nothing that may invite their attention, and stay off their radar. Yes, there are options to counter even those, with some degree of success - but in my scenario that would involve sacrificing too much everyday comfort for questionable benefits, and I am not yet paranoid enough for such a tradeoff - though moving in this direction (= . Webcam (and sometimes even microphone) can be disabled in BIOS of some machines, and in OS if not.

 

The more lengths you go to in order to hide yourself, the more attention you attract. Use a VPN that doesn't log (there's a ton of them) - there are extremely legitimate uses for VPNs such as security on public WiFi. There are even a bunch of free VPNs. I use Tunnelbear whenever I'm doing something sensitive on my android phone.

This is why I like Tunnelbear the most out of all the services I've tried - they have the clearest Privacy Policy of them all.

https://www.tunnelbear.com/privacy-policy

 

Hmm... hypothetical from the top of my head. Of course nowhere near 100% anon....

0) Get a degree (at least BS, if not MS or higher) in CS or similar.
1) Build your own computer with open-sourced hardware without backdoors (good luck with this...). Possible alternative would be to buy a bunch of burner laptops.
1a) Don't buy any hardware with recording capabilities (webcam, for example, as mentioned before).
2) Use a completely open-sourced kernel and OS that doesn't have backdoors (something built on the linux-libre kernel, for example).
3) Use Internet-facing software that's open-sourced and doesn't contain any backdoors.
3a) Use trusted VPNs, proxies, Tor, etc.
4) Never, ever make an account anywhere. If you don't have this option on a site, simply don't use it.
4a) NEVER log into anything within Tor (ex: Don't use Facebook while using that).
5) Don't use anything online that's even tangentially attached to your real self (so no buying stuff online, for example).
6) Forget all that I just said, since full, 100% real privacy on the Internet is a fool's errand.

 

Uses a pen and a paper and mail the message with one time pad encryption.

 

VPN's (e.g. TunnelBear) will suffice for browsing. Unless you're specifically targeted by a governmental agency, there's nothing to worry about.

One thing you can do is flood the Internet with misinformation until you are indistinguishable between identities. This is a form of anonymity. This requires a vast knowledge of computer systems and programming, as well as resources to purchase networked systems (e.g. bot-net) to handle distribution.

You'll never stay entirely anonymous, but you can hide in plain sight.