At this point, everybody knows Edward Snowden and his deeds. The biggest leak of classified documents in the United States changed international relationships and became one of the most discussed problems in American politics. If you are curious, you can check a comprehensive timeline from Aljazeera here.
But, what does this have to do with you? Well, it's a little complicated. Remember that the NSA is not the only organization that spies on you. When you think about it, you realize that private data is the most valued commodity in internet. The biggest companies online get the big part of their revenue from selling private data for advertising. So, internet is based upon it. But the problem is that the people usually does not know this. They think of Google as "the good guys", companies that give away their products for free, but there is no such thing in the real world. So, I think it would be useful to have a little guide to keep privacy safe, or at least to provide some options when you don't want everybody to know what you are doing in Internet. The following is a list of tools that will help you to surf online anonymously and/or keeping your data safe.
TOR
Nowadays this is no longer a secret. I remember when I used this and I thought it was a big deal...However. The TOR network is a great way to use Internet anonymously. If you want more details on how to install it and how to use it, you can read this article, or check the official TOR website.
Of course, this TOR thing can get very complicated. You can find a detailed tutorial here. It explains how to "torify" your online experience. From the introduction of that tutorial:
"This document explains how to configure a particular application for use with Tor and thus the Tor network. As Tor constantly evolves, the knowledge and understanding about anonymity online also evolves. Implementations and other aspects of online anonymity become more and more complex. In the past, an end user would just go ahead and "torify" applications like Mozilla Firefox - this is no longer recommend. As we learned more on the subject and implementation of online anonymity, we discovered it was increasingly easy for a user to leak sensitive information to those interested in obtaining it."
Duckduckgo.com
This an anonymous search engine. Just like that. Take into account that Google, Bing, and other search engines store data about everything you look for in Internet. So, next time you want to know a little more about something controversial, consider using an anonymous search engine: https://duckduckgo.com/
If you want to know more about it, check this. I honestly think that the idea is great, and I hope I can contribute to the project in some way in the future.
Anonymous chat service
As you already know, you can't trust a regular messenger client for delicate information. So, there is an anonymous chat service that is built on TOR, without any nick names, with encrypted messaged and file transfers. I'm talking about TorChat. The following is a description I copied from here:
"TorChat is a decentralized anonymous instant messenger that uses Tor hidden services as its underlying network. It provides cryptographically secure text messaging and file transfers. There are versions available for Microsoft Windows and Linux. A beta version is in development for Mac OS X, and a cross-platform version called jTorChat is being developed in Java.
In TorChat every user has a unique alphanumeric ID consisting of 16 characters. This ID will be randomly created by Tor when the client is started the first time, it is basically the .onion address of a hidden service. TorChat comes bundled with a copy of the Tor onion router readily configured so that it can be run as a portable application without any installation, configuration, or account creation.
TorChat is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The first public version of TorChat was released in November 2007 by Bernd Kreuß and has since then been constantly developed further. It is written in Python and uses the cross-platform widget toolkit wxPython which makes it possible to support a wide range of platforms and operating systems."
You can download TorChat here.
Mail services
Mail services are essential, and I'm sure you'll be in the need of anonymity for this service at some point of your life. There are several free and paid anonymous mail services. However, as with all the tools I'm listing here, you should be careful. Don't send any sensible data, since it's difficult to know who is behind the services, and how they are managed. Anyway, Mailtor was the mail service I liked the most. It's free and simple to use. Remember, you need to be connected to TOR just to check Mailtor's webpage: http://mailtoralnhyol5v.onion/src/login.php
Money
The "default" currency in Torland is Bitcoin. This currency is just like cash: If you go somewhere and pay with that, nobody could track you. It's great to be able to do the same online. I wrote something about it before. You can read it here.
This is it for now. There are a lot of tools for keeping your privacy online, so much that it would be impossible to review them all, but I'll continue posting more about this topic.
But, what does this have to do with you? Well, it's a little complicated. Remember that the NSA is not the only organization that spies on you. When you think about it, you realize that private data is the most valued commodity in internet. The biggest companies online get the big part of their revenue from selling private data for advertising. So, internet is based upon it. But the problem is that the people usually does not know this. They think of Google as "the good guys", companies that give away their products for free, but there is no such thing in the real world. So, I think it would be useful to have a little guide to keep privacy safe, or at least to provide some options when you don't want everybody to know what you are doing in Internet. The following is a list of tools that will help you to surf online anonymously and/or keeping your data safe.
TOR
Nowadays this is no longer a secret. I remember when I used this and I thought it was a big deal...However. The TOR network is a great way to use Internet anonymously. If you want more details on how to install it and how to use it, you can read this article, or check the official TOR website.
Of course, this TOR thing can get very complicated. You can find a detailed tutorial here. It explains how to "torify" your online experience. From the introduction of that tutorial:
"This document explains how to configure a particular application for use with Tor and thus the Tor network. As Tor constantly evolves, the knowledge and understanding about anonymity online also evolves. Implementations and other aspects of online anonymity become more and more complex. In the past, an end user would just go ahead and "torify" applications like Mozilla Firefox - this is no longer recommend. As we learned more on the subject and implementation of online anonymity, we discovered it was increasingly easy for a user to leak sensitive information to those interested in obtaining it."
Duckduckgo.com
This an anonymous search engine. Just like that. Take into account that Google, Bing, and other search engines store data about everything you look for in Internet. So, next time you want to know a little more about something controversial, consider using an anonymous search engine: https://duckduckgo.com/
If you want to know more about it, check this. I honestly think that the idea is great, and I hope I can contribute to the project in some way in the future.
Anonymous chat service
As you already know, you can't trust a regular messenger client for delicate information. So, there is an anonymous chat service that is built on TOR, without any nick names, with encrypted messaged and file transfers. I'm talking about TorChat. The following is a description I copied from here:
"TorChat is a decentralized anonymous instant messenger that uses Tor hidden services as its underlying network. It provides cryptographically secure text messaging and file transfers. There are versions available for Microsoft Windows and Linux. A beta version is in development for Mac OS X, and a cross-platform version called jTorChat is being developed in Java.
In TorChat every user has a unique alphanumeric ID consisting of 16 characters. This ID will be randomly created by Tor when the client is started the first time, it is basically the .onion address of a hidden service. TorChat comes bundled with a copy of the Tor onion router readily configured so that it can be run as a portable application without any installation, configuration, or account creation.
TorChat is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The first public version of TorChat was released in November 2007 by Bernd Kreuß and has since then been constantly developed further. It is written in Python and uses the cross-platform widget toolkit wxPython which makes it possible to support a wide range of platforms and operating systems."
You can download TorChat here.
Mail services
Mail services are essential, and I'm sure you'll be in the need of anonymity for this service at some point of your life. There are several free and paid anonymous mail services. However, as with all the tools I'm listing here, you should be careful. Don't send any sensible data, since it's difficult to know who is behind the services, and how they are managed. Anyway, Mailtor was the mail service I liked the most. It's free and simple to use. Remember, you need to be connected to TOR just to check Mailtor's webpage: http://mailtoralnhyol5v.onion/src/login.php
Money
The "default" currency in Torland is Bitcoin. This currency is just like cash: If you go somewhere and pay with that, nobody could track you. It's great to be able to do the same online. I wrote something about it before. You can read it here.
This is it for now. There are a lot of tools for keeping your privacy online, so much that it would be impossible to review them all, but I'll continue posting more about this topic.