All this hubbub about Google & Verizon’s plans to control the interwebs (or whatever), combined with some recent articles on computer privacy have made me curious about how to “privatize” my web surfing experience. I already use NoScript, and use Scroogle for regular searches whenever convenient. I’m sure there’s other things I can do…
on IE8, you can use the InPrivate setting. That should help.
One of the best things you can do is worry about the cookies and other traces that are on your computer. Download ccleaner and set up to be as private as you want to scrub your computer at certain times like every startup. It is free and very reputable. You can’t control how other people store what they send to your IP address that easily but some people set up things like VPN’s and proxy servers for complete protection. That is a little advanced for most normal users however and generally not needed for legal, private internet activity.
It doesn’t. In IE8 InPrivate setting revert to the default no privacy every time you open the browser. You have to manually reconfigure the InPrivate settings every time you open the browser. Microsoft deliberately set it up this way.
Use Firefox instead and install a number of privacy addons that permanently lock down your privacy. However, any privacy configurations you may install as an end user are of limited value. While they will work, you can still be traced via your ISP.
BTW, the Google/Verizon plan isn’t about privacy, per se. It’s about corporate control of an information system where they decide what you can access via the Internet, regardless of what privacy settings you may have installed on your end.
There’s two way to look at this:
- Privacy from other users of your computer (wife, kids, coworkers)…
Using a separate Windows account altogether would be easiest, since that would make all your docs/files/etc. private from them (or at least “private enough” unless they’re computer-savvy). Set a password.
For additional security, you can encrypt your files with Window’s built-in encryption mechanism and that’ll make them pretty safe from other users.
Mac and Linux machines have similar capabilities.
InPrivate (IE)/Private Browsing (FF)/Incognito (Chrome) does the job as long as you remember to activate it, but it also kills usability because you lose your history, cookies, etc. once you’re done. Fine if you just want stuff to be private for a single SESSION (porn, whatever), but not if you want ALL your web browsing history to be private ALL THE TIME while still retaining the benefits of having a history. If that’s indeed what you want, you can probably find extensions that keep private mode on all the time.
- Privacy from Big Brother
If Big Brother is your corporation and your corporation isn’t someone powerful like AT&T, your generic commercial VPN or Anonymizer solution should be fine.
If Big Brother is the government, well, good luck. There are things like the aforementioned VPNs and Tor and Freenet, but in general, unless you really know what you’re doing, you’re pretty much fucked. Your entire life is a subpoena or wiretap away. You’d have to essentially live off the grid and be pretty careful about everything you say and do online, and you’d have to live a lifestyle dependent on end-to-end encryption and/or anonymity and only interact with other parties who uphold the same commitment. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t be posting here.
Also note that things like browser addons (extensions or even things like Flash) can leave their own cookie crumbs, and private browsing usually doesn’t know how to deal with that.
Best to maintain a separate browser (download Chrome or Opera if you don’t already use one of them), don’t add ANY addons to it and use theme exclusively, in private mode, for your dirty deeds. As a side note, I believe the latest Chrome versions come with Flash built-in and I’m not sure how it deals with Flash cookies in private mode… somebody else will have to chime in.
On Macs, you can use the guest account. All information in the guest account is deleted every time you log out. All cache files, all cookies, all history.
Of course, most websites can trace your IP address, and you get someone like DoubleClick, and they can follow you from site to site. Your IP address is fairly static.
You can try an anonymous browsing service. These replace your details in the IP packages with faux details, so the visited website knows nothing about you.
Of course, the browsing service not only can gather details about you, but also the sites you’re visiting. And, the fact you don’t want people to know you’re doing it.
Or go into a public library with sunglasses and a wig and use a computer there.
While I agree CCleaner is an excellent tool, please make sure you are carefully reading before you use it. It is way to easy to delete files that you will later need. Even a file like a thum.db file can be needed in a program.
I found out that, why would a program need to access it’s thumb.db file? Some programs especially the free ones are real touchy about what you delete after you install them.
Of course you can simply set CCleaner to not delete such files. And this is where I am coming from when I say, you have to be careful with it.
It’s an excellent piece of software, just read about what you’re gonna erase first and you’ll be fine.
Alaways use the back up on CCleaner as well.
How private do you want? I don’t think there’s anything you can do if they subpoena your ISP to give you up.
Use Tor
If you’re using company computers to do your web browsing, then it’s essentially impossible to keep anything private if they don’t want you to. They can certainly sniff out any packets going over their network. You could do all of your browsing through an encrypted proxy, but they’d still at least know what proxy you’re connecting to and how much information you’re uploading and downloading, and it’d be fairly straightforward for them to just block all access to that proxy. Or, of course, if they really want to get you, they could do something drastic like installing a keylogger on all of their machines, which would catch you no matter what you did.
This is close, but to go all the way, you have to use an open wireless connection and spoof your MAC address randomly while driving around (and thus getting multiple hotspots.) Use that to get to a proxy–or, better yet, a compromised computer owned by someone else, and then to a proxy, so it looks like they were the one trying to hide if you get traced at all. When you are finished, erase everything on your hard drive with multiple passes, just in case. (You can destroy your computer, but then you reach diminishing returns.)
That’s as private as I think you can be. It’s actually a favorite method of malware writers. But I doubt you’ll want to use it.
ETA: left out that you need to encrypt everything you can. Heck, your backdoor can use steganographic techniques to seem like a simple email or something.
Oops, absolutely. Should’ve clarified that I meant using the company network with your own laptop and VPN service.
Why not just use their computer?
Google’s Chrome provides the option of using what they call an “incognito window.”
It doesn’t save anything. I’m using it now because my husband questioned me about an SDMB thread that showed up in History. The thread was in the Pit and the title had a few f-words in it, so he was curious. I wasn’t embarrassed about it and explained it to him, but it pissed me off. (I mean, really, he visits porn sites and he knows I know he does, so he’s got a nerve to ask about MY sites!) I thought the hell with him – I’ll use the incognito window! (He doesn’t know about it, even though it’s in a drop-down menu.)
FYI, I didn’t seem to find any Flash cookies (local shared objects) browsing in private mode with either Firefox 3.6.8 or Chrome 6.0.472.25 dev, so that made me feel a little safer.
Tor takes so long that pages tend to time out when you try to load them though.
For Firefox, I also suggest Ghostery, Beef Taco, NoScript, FlashBlock, AdBlock and a cookie manager. There’s probably 100 more, I haven’t kept up with it in a while.
I don’t know if there’s any way to do it in Windows but I do this to completely disable Flash LSOs on Linux: chmod 000 ~/.macromedia. Might want to delete the contents first, or even better, delete the directory and replace it with a file.
Use Tor, Open DNS, a good hosts file, adblocker with easy list, easy privacy, malware lists, and webbug lists, noscript installed in firefox, proixy installed, and your good to go. You can do this in a virtual machine if you want or set up a proxy server
For extra security, use a portable app browser that can be run from a thumb drive or encrypted partition. It will keep any cookies, stored passwords, etc. in its own little walled garden (which gives you all the usability advantages of those features while greatly mitigating the privacy risk).