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February 16th, 2013 | #1 |
Administrator
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Privacy
[go thru bottom link to get links to these five softwares]
Five tools to protect your privacy online by Simon Black on February 15, 2013 Reporting from the 6th Region, Central Chile We’ve discussed many times before—hardly a month goes by without some major action against Internet users… from Obama’s ‘kill switch’, to ACTA, SOPA and PIPA, to stasi tactics against people like Kim Dotcom. Online privacy is becoming more important by the day. And nobody is going to give it to you, you have to take steps yourself to secure it. Below are five different tools and services that will get you started: 1. Tor Browser Tor is a great weapon in the fight for online anonymity as it allows you to surf the web without giving up your location and other personal data to the websites you visit. The Tor Browser Bundle is the easiest and most secure way to get started; simply download it, and start surfing the web with the Tor Browser. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Learn more about and download the Tor Browser Bundle here 2. Duck Duck Go If you want privacy, don’t search with Google. Google store all of your searches to customize ads for you, but even worse, they can hand over the whole list of searches to any government agency that are curious about what you’ve been looking at for the last couple years. A better alternative is Duck Duck Go, a completely anonymous search engine that does not store any information about you or your searches. The search results are essentially identical to Google’s, so there’s no loss of quality. Search with Duck Duck Go here 3. HTTPS Everywhere HTTPS Everywhere is a plug-in for Firefox and Google Chrome that tries to force a website to connect in secure mode, thus encrypting your traffic with the website you are visiting. This makes your browsing more secure because it prevents eavesdropping thieves or state-mafia from intercepting your unencrypted Internet traffic. Download HTTPS Everywhere here 4. Cryptocat Cryptocat is an encrypted chat that beats Facebook and Skype when it comes to security and privacy. If you want to chat in private then this is one simple solution. It’s also open source, which means you can see the full code and be sure there are no government “backdoors” built in. Read more about and download Cryptocat here 5. Silent Circle Silent Circle is a new player on the market, but it is founded by “old” players in the security and encryption industry. One of the founders, Phil Zimmerman, is also the creator of PGP, one of the most-used encryption platforms in the world. Silent Circle is a suite of products offering: Encrypted email Encrypted video chat Encrypted phone calls Encrypted text messaging Silent Circle is the only service on this list that is not free. But having the gold standard of encryption may be worth it for you. It is for me. Read more about Silent Circle here Bottom Line You can set up most of the tools we discussed in 5 minutes. Each of them will go a long way in securing your privacy online. http://www.sovereignman.com/personal...y-tools-10859/ |
February 17th, 2013 | #2 |
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 9,744
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Truecrypt file and disk encryption
Truecrypt file and whole system drive encryption: http://www.truecrypt.org/
Encrypting files by creating a new volume: Encrypting entire system drive (know what you're doing before doing this) : Last edited by varg; February 20th, 2013 at 07:25 PM. Reason: . |
February 20th, 2013 | #3 |
Good Guy
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 490
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On password creation, security and how secure passwords are compromised.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012...under-assault/ |
February 20th, 2013 | #4 | ||
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 9,744
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Eraser
http://eraser.heidi.ie/
Basically when you delete a file under Windows, it doesn't actually delete the data. The file is still there and is just hidden from you. The file can still be recovered using programs like Recuva and other more advanced forensic recovery tools. The file's data is only wiped when it's overwritten. Either when your hard drive is filled up to capacity, or if you use special tools that will write random data over your file multiple times. If you want to delete specific files you can simply right click the file and use 'eraser' and choose a different level of secure deleting, Gutman being the strongest because it uses 35 passes of random data. If you've never securely deleted files before then your hard drive still has lots of recoverable files and you'll want to do a clean of 'Unused space' to remove traces of old stuff. Having it scheduled biweekly isn't a bad idea either. Don't use Gutman on the whole unused space clean, it will take way too long on large HDs and might deteriorate the drive's performance over time. Quote:
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Last edited by varg; February 20th, 2013 at 07:02 PM. Reason: . |
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February 20th, 2013 | #5 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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CCleaner
https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Cleans unnecessary temporary files, freeing up space, but also clears out various tracking history data and unwanted browser cookies. You can schedule it to run on a daily basis. Just make sure to exclude trusted websites from the cookie cleaner through settings, otherwise your 'remember me' auto-login details will be deleted on sites and you'll always have to be logging back in to your accounts. Quote:
Last edited by varg; February 20th, 2013 at 07:08 PM. Reason: ... |
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February 20th, 2013 | #6 | |
Good Guy
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 490
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A password manager that encrypts your password database and you secure it with one master password. Free, open source software.
http://keepass.info/ Quote:
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February 20th, 2013 | #7 |
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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Keep in mind the software you linked to is different from the software in the description you gave.
The link goes to LastPass, the description is for KeePass. Lastpass stores your encrypted (supposedly) passwords in the cloud on their servers. I trust KeePass more than Lastpass, since KeePass's database is only stored locally on your computer. LastPass is easier to use because it will fill the login forms out for you and doesn't require as much user intervention. Supposedly they encrypt your database that's housed on their servers and they claim it's unreadable to anyone but you, but I really don't trust anyone that well. If you want to make KeePass easier to use and automated, get the KeePassHTTP plugin. Though it might be more advanced to set up that way. You need the Chrome or Firefox extension too. Last edited by varg; February 20th, 2013 at 09:57 PM. Reason: . |
February 21st, 2013 | #8 | |
Good Guy
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 490
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Fixed it Varg, thanks.
I had LastPass URL on the clipboard, forgot to copy the correct one. I prefer to not have my passwords on a server, encrypted or not, I like them here. Assuming that Mega.co.nz is totally secure, that might be a safe place to store an encrypted password list. They claim that even the server admins cannot decrypt files that are stored there. Last week Mega offered rewards for anyone that could find security holes in the site and evidently some were found, Mega patched them and paid the people they said they would. Quote:
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January 18th, 2014 | #9 |
Administrator
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January 18th, 2014 | #10 | |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 25
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TOR Compromised by NSA
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January 19th, 2014 | #11 |
Jeunesse Dorée
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Four Seasons Jalalabad
Posts: 9,750
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If I were a government spy agency I would pay particular attention to all those services which purport to offer privacy and encryption. If a business offering online privacy is located in the West it is liable to be forced to secretly provide government agencies access to its clients, we´ve already seen this in that Email company whose owner shut down the business rather than cooperate with the government, I forgot what the name was.
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January 19th, 2014 | #12 |
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The US govt funds a large percentage of TOR's development. I think something like 90% .
It's not a 'secure' protocol either. It just proxies your traffic through other hosts to add a layer of anonymity, without much attention given to encryption. It's not known whether tor is entirely anonymous, or if the NSA can still trace it. The problem with TOR are the exitnodes. Anyone can set up a fake TOR exitnode and watch all the traffic going across the wire, even eavesdrop on passwords. I've read that the US govt sets up fake/honeypot tor exitnodes. Also there's been proof of concepts for removing the encryption from HTTPS sites (ssl encryption), eavesdropping on the data, and sending it back to the user while they're fooled into thinking their traffic is being encrypted. It's also theoretically possible for the exitnode to inject malicious code or viruses into websites and send it back to the user without them being aware. Do not login to any private accounts while using tor. Last edited by varg; January 19th, 2014 at 11:00 AM. Reason: . |
January 19th, 2014 | #13 |
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Chrome extension author talks about how malware companies offer extension programmers money in exchange for injecting malicious code, or collecting user data used for marketing. Same thing probably happens to other software and other browsers.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...opular_chrome/ The NSA often tries to pay off security companies to keep their software's encryption weak or infected with a backdoor. http://rt.com/usa/rsa-nsa-deal-weaken-encryption-581/ http://www.pcworld.com/article/20871...e-routers.html |
January 19th, 2014 | #14 |
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Researchers pay to have the popular encryption program TrueCrypt audited for any backdoors:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/20612...ing-goals.html |
January 19th, 2014 | #15 |
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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Good news source for privacy, NSA, security, and other tech related issues here: http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy
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January 19th, 2014 | #16 | |
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January 24th, 2014 | #17 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2004
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more on tor weaknesses
Malicious Russian Tor Exit Relays Intercepting encrypted Traffic of Facebook Users - http://thehackernews.com/2014/01/mal...it-relays.html
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January 24th, 2014 | #18 | |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%2...ity_network%29
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