The safest way to surf the web anonimously

[Jeff Tesla]

Hi,

My friends were hacked and had their credit card info stolen - I want to surf absolutely safely!
Is it possible? I don't even want heaven forbid our government to find out what I am doing on the web (NSA, CIA, etc)

What is the safest way? Don't mind paying for it a little...

Thanks a million in advance...

 

[beers]

Hi,

They probably just had malware, VPNs and proxies really don't do anything if you visit garbage websites and have infected equipment.

 

[Geoff]

Using a proxy or VPN is not going to keep the NSA from being able to monitor you. With having their info stolen, they most likely received a phishing attack where a site asked for your personal information, and they gave it to them thinking it was legitimate. No matter how many VPNs and proxies you use, they won't help you from phishing attacks, malware, etc.

 

[tesla]

Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but could someone explain the difference between a proxy, VPN, private network, and TOR?

Thanks a lot everyone!

 

[voyagerfan99]

Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but could someone explain the difference between a proxy, VPN, private network, and TOR?

Thanks a lot everyone!

What, did you forget the password already for the original posting account?

 

[Agent Smith]

Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but could someone explain the difference between a proxy, VPN, private network, and TOR?

Proxy is like a transparent connection that in some cases may use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to make it look like you are using a different IP address. But a proxy isn't very good at really hiding your location due to scripts a website may use and other factors. They're not worth it IMO. VPN is a Virtual Private Network. Basically they work by so-called tunneling your IP traffic to a VPN server using an encrypted connection and then from the server retrieves your request. So from your computer to the server your traffic is encrypted. From the server to the website you fetched it is not. Unless the website is using SSL then the traffic would be encrypted end to end. This will not stop the NSA from seeing your traffic, but a VPN does offer some anonymity. I use VPN.ac myself with Elliptic Curve Encryption on port 443 so it looks like regular SSL traffic. Now using a browser like Firefox or the Thunderbird E-mail client you need to disable WebRTC. Read the following info. https://www.privateinternetaccess.c...ome-and-mozilla-firefox-while-using-private-i

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-see-if-your-vpn-is-leaking-your-ip-address-and-1685180082

https://www.browserleaks.com/webrtc

Note that if you use something like Skype and a VPN your traffic passes through Microsoft's servers despite a VPN.

Tor you don't want to use. Tor uses encryption with the connection and your traffic passes through several other Tor exit nodes. So tracing the original location is pretty difficult. But here's the biggest flaw. Anybody can create an exit node. So this means someone could sniff all the traffic that goes through their Tor server. I don't doubt for a minute the NSA has a few Tor exit nodes. Also, some websites can only be accessed from Tor. Speaking of Tor, I block it on my websites. LOL


If you want some pretty straight forward anonymity and privacy I would use a good VPN pay with bitcoins, create a new E-mail address account with Tor and use that E-mail account to sign up for the VPN. Use Firefox or a Mozilla variant browser like Pale Moon using the extensions, NoScript, Secretagent, Betterprivacy, Privacy Badger and toss in uBlock (Non-Origin version) Run the browser in Sandboxie. Take it one step further and do all this in a Ubuntu VMware Player virtual machine.

Do you understand? LOL

Edit- Another thing to consider: From my blog:

Another thing to consider is your DNS and potential leaks. If you use a VPN I would set this site as your home page so that you can make sure you are tunneling to the location you expect. https://www.dnsleaktest.com/
Now I would use the extended DNS test. If you see your ISP’s server then your ISP is using transparent DNS servers. You might have to do a Whois on the IP addresses listed from the extended test. http://whois.domaintools.com/
If you discover that your ISP uses transparent DNS then look here and use the dnsfixsetup program. https://www.dnsleaktest.com/how-to-fix-a-dns-leak.html

VPN.ac takes care of the DNS for you.