CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR PC But that anonymity comes at the expense of browsing speed. Sometimes sites can load veeeeery slooooowly. This is because your connection traffic is routed through many other Tor users’ PCs. An alternative is to install the HTTPS Everywhere add-on for Firefox and Chrome browsers. (I’ve long since pushed the Firefox barrow in this column because you really should have stopped using Internet Explorer long ago.) This add-on sets up an encrypted tunnel between you and the sites you visit. Why? So others cannot intercept and decipher that signals traffic. However, it won’t hide your IP address from hope you’ve recovered from last month’s the destination site. Nor will it prevent others revelations. knowing which sites you’re visiting. Now I don’t know about you, but I am most But it will prevent Wi-Fi snoops and others definitely not a terrorist. Nor am I a religious from ‘reading’ your communications. nutter who thinks becoming a mass murderer would please my god. ANONYMOUS SEARCH ENGINE Sadly, our privacy has become a major casualty Google has questionable data retention in push for increasingly intrusive surveillance. policies. And it has been named as a participant So I resent any attempts – no matter how well in the PRISM program, part of whistleblower meant -- to monitor my activities both on and Snowden’s revelations. offline. There are alternatives. I previously As an innocent citizen I reserve the right recommended DuckDuckGo.com as it uses its to counter intrusive online surveillance of my own web crawler, and – unlike Google – it keeps activities on principle. no records of web searches. Oh, and don’t expect governments to be Startpage.com gives Google results but your sympathetic to your concerns. It’s very much a search itself it made anonymous. matter of self-help and carrying out your own form of resistance. You want close to 100 percent privacy? Easy. Toss out your mobile phone. Avoid any form of wireless communications. Sell your router. And stay off the internet. Somehow I suspect that’s not going to happen… So let’s move to looking at more realistic options!
YOUR PRIVACY IS A JOKE (PART 2 OF 2)
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INSTALL AND USE A SECURE BROWSER The free Tor Browser, a stripped down version of Firefox from www.torproject.org, is part of the long established Tor network. Its ‘onion routing’ technique basically means your connections are relayed through several other computers to obscure your IP. This then makes tracking back to you just about impossible. To further obscure connections and provide anonymity Tor offers a range of other services and add-ons for messaging and emails.
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Consider instead the CryptoCat add-on for Firefox, Chrome and Safari. With it your chat in your browser window is secured from eavesdroppers – government agencies or otherwise. A more secure alternative to Skype is Jitsi, an open-source, multi-platform application. With it you can encrypt all your video and voice calls, and your instant messaging. SECURE EMAIL There are several encryption options but I have to tell you they are not easy to use. GnuPG, Gpg4win and Enigmail are major contenders. Good luck. You’ll need it if you really, really want secure email. FILE ENCRYPTION Hackers, thieves, nosey visitors – all could easily access your files and documents if they want to. The popular, free TrueCrypt uses virtual drives to encrypt your files. Once installed it works on-the-fly. All you have to do is feed it occasional passwords you’ll need to subsequently decrypt your data. As for individual files you can send them to your Dropbox. Or use 7-Zip, a free compression tool, that offers a very strong encryption option.
SECURE PASSWORDS Yes, a vexed issue. (Hope you change yours every month.) Firefox has its own password manager where your password vault is protected by a master password Lastpass is free, simple and easy-to-use. To use it you only need to remember your master password. It supports automatic passwordgeneration (and retention) for many sites, automatic form filling and an onscreen keyboard All search results go through the Startpage to stymie keyloggers that have insinuated web service – not Google, who has no idea who themselves onto your PC. Keepass is another free option. Your password performed the search. Furthermore, Startpage keeps no records of vault is protected by a master password. It also offer advanced features you can mix’n’match to IP addresses or search queries. satisfy your requirements. THE CHATTERING MASSES The Prism hitlist includes Skype, Google, SOME guy bought a new fridge for his Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo so your instant house. To get rid of the old fridge, he put messaging through them most certainly is not it in his front yard and hung a sign on it private. saying: "Free to good home. You want it, you take it." For three days the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it. He eventually decided that people were too un-trusting of this deal. It looked to good to be true, so he changed the sign to read: "Fridge for sale $50." That night someone stole it.