internet privacy Archives - How to Stay Anonymous Online

Evil Twin Spoofing – Bye Bye Passwords

Ever hear of this – Evil Twin Spoofing? Sounds quite weird but it’s a very simple way of stealing peoples accounts, passwords and basically their entire identity. So that you’re aware here’s a how it works. An identity Thief makes himself comfortable in an airline lounge or his local Starbucks and gets out his laptop. Instead of just then browsing like everyone else, he sets up his laptop as a wireless access point using some free software. He calls his Access Point something friendly and plausible – perhaps Starbuck-Free-Wifi for instance, they then sit and wait.

It won’t be long before people start connecting to this bogus access point and as long as it’s been set up correctly – IE to relay all connections through the legitimate wifi AP then noone will be any the wiser.

Why Would He do This ?

Hopefully you’re one step ahead of me by now, everyone who is using the bogus access point will be unaware that they’re sending every keystroke, every password and every account name they connect to through this computer. Checking their paypal account, buying something from the internet, online banking – anything vaguely like this and the identity thief has struck gold.

You’re not likely to find out straight away of course, depending on the skill of the online thief and what lengths he intends to go to. But likely when you visit the ATM and find your balance at zero or worse then you might find out. Be very careful when connecting to Public free Wifi anywhere if you do use it, either use a product like . or never check anything with a username or password.

Discover How California’s Privacy Protection Laws Can Affect Businesses In Your State?

If you are looking to fully understand how privacy laws can affect you, you need to understand California’s Privacy Laws. California’s privacy laws are listed in the state constitution, mandatory to report any breeches in security, and all states must comply in regards to business transactions. Let’s explore the importance California has made in today’s Privacy Act.

In the state of California, privacy laws have become a state wide enforcement, protecting its residents from identity theft. California has gone above the other 49 states in the union by integrating its own privacy laws in its state constitution. This state has become the leader when enforcing the privacy rights of all individuals involved. California hopes that one day every state will get involved in protecting individuals on the same level. Once you understand the high standards California has with privacy issues, you will begin to see why this state has such a low tolerance for identity theft.

How does California manage to enforce its privacy law throughout the entire state? What makes this state stand out from the other states with their implemented privacy laws? California has a no tolerance policy to anyone who breeches the privacy protection act. Any business caught violating these laws has to make a press release explaining the violations that occurred. Now that we have covered California’s policy on breech of privacy, we can continue on the individual rights of the California resident.

The Privacy Protection Act covers all residents and businesses in all 50 states in the United States. California has just taken extra precautions to ensure that all residents in the state are protected, even from businesses in other states. Privacy protection of all California’s residents requires that all businesses residing outside the states boundaries follow the same California law when involving sales to its residents. Meaning, that if a business in Ohio breeches the California Privacy Protection Act, then then that business could suffer consequences in California’s state court. All businesses, regardless of what state they reside in, should fully understand California’s Privacy Protection Laws, to prevent any future law suits.

Did you know that much about California’s Privacy Protection Laws? California’s privacy laws are listed in the state constitution, mandatory to report any breeches in security, and all states must comply in regards to business transactions. So next time you conduct business with California, remember that you are bound, and protected, by California’s Privacy Laws.

Internet Privacy Protection – Is there a Need?

o we really need to be concerned with protecting our privacy on the internet? Are there really legions of people spying on us and watching our every move. Well hopefully this article will give you some knowledge of the issues that are really involved in priivacy protection on the internet.

So who is likely to be spying on us and why?

Well let’s be clear, internet crime is big, very big, the totals are never going to be exact as we simply don’t have a record but you’d be safe to assume it’s going to be counted in billions of dollars world wide. Many, perhaps the majority of these crimes are not listed, recorded or even noticed so an estimate is all we’re going to get.

There are many major crime syndicates who are targeting the internet. Cyber Gangs in places like Brazil, China and Eastern Europe have very sophisticated criminal networks. Stealing over the internet from you and me is immensely rewarding and relatively risk free. You can see the attraction to the criminal fraternity big rewards, safe and very low risk.

So we know that gangs will routinely target the average internet surfer, furthermore many will be extremely careful in how they steal from you but there are literally endless ways to steal your information and ultimately your money. For instance I have seen a sealed copy of windows XP which looked 100% legitimate bought from Eastern Europe, it was shrink wrapped, had a licence, manual included but it had an extra bonus. The CD contained a version of Windows XP with spyware and trojans already installed, as soon as you used this version of XP your details, accounts and passwords would be passed out to a remote site on the internet.

Just like you lock your doors to protect your possessions and home, many people do the same on the internet. I want my privacy protected because online I pay bills, order goods, do my banking and many other activities which involve my financial and personal details. Do I want these details logged on servers, routers and at my ISP – well no not really.

You see it’s not that hard to steal personal details online, it’s slightly harder to make money from them but not too difficult. It’s certainly the only way a gang of cyber criminals in Rio De Janerio will be able to steal from you without you holidaying in Brazil. If you did discover your bank account has been raided like this, what could you do? IN reality all you can do is try to get your money back from your bank or credit card provider, either way the criminal will be unlikely to pay for his crimes.

It’s certainly worth checking out how you can add another layer of protection when you surf online, proxies and VPNs are one possibility. However you should stay away from unmanaged, free proxies that you can find online, simply because they are often run by the criminals themselves in order to harvest passwords and email accounts. Try this as a useful introduction –

Some Security and Anonymity Articles

Some Useful Security and Privacy based Articles

A video about the risks of relying on SSL – Safe Browsing.

Keep your Identity and IP Address Secure

Why do you guess that people go to the trouble of utilizing software that hides your IP address? Whenever you investigate, you’ll find there’s lots of reasons but here are a few.

There are plenty of countries where you risk your safety should you speak freely online
Using the internet means you’ll be routinely monitored and have little privacy
The web is full of information and identity thieves
Some people just don’t like our every move online being logged

Obviously the internet has it’s fair share of criminals who wish to hide their IP address aswell. Just as they use other forms of communication like telephones, faxes and the mail! The irony is the evil doers always protect their connections so you inevitably end up with governments, agencies and hackers all spying on the innocent majority.

This is what so annoys me about the ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide’ argument, the majority who do are hidden. The rest of us are subject to surveillance, spying and intrusion by even the most democratic western governments. The European Directive instructs ISPS to log all the web sites, emails and electronic communications of it’s citizens for up to 2 years.

However it is also worth reminding people that using a simple piece of hide your ip software, or some super elite proxy you found listed on a web site is going to help your privacy. Most of this software doesn’t do much at all, remember HTTP is clear text protocol and that’s where most of your browsing happens through. These Hide your IP programs simply obscure your IP address from the website that you visit and that’s all. But every other details of your browsing is in the clear and traceable to your IP address, sitting in your ISP is a list of virtually everything you’ve ever done online over the last two years or so.

Beware most of all thought the software that simply routes your connection through free proxies found on the internet. They then route all your web browsing through the fastest, free proxy that they find available. It wouldn’t matter if the proxy was being run by a gang of identity thieves (which many of them are) purely to harvest user details, the software would still send you there. You would be much more secure using nothing than one of these, see one of the best and most secure programs here.

Simply staying secure online actually does take some work, too many people are misled by tales of free proxies and they actually put themselves at huge risk. You need to use secure private proxies, you should know who is responsible for them and ensure that the logs are deleted instantly. Any proper security product will also ensure that all your browsing is encrypted as otherwise your details and IP will be visible all along it’s route.

Surf securely and protect yourself online

Catch the Criminals – Not the Innocent

One of the problems I have with all the monitoring, filtering and surveillance that goes on online it that it rarely works. For a start surveillance, 99.999% of the time all you are doing is monitoring the innocent. Anyone who has anything to hide can easily takes steps to bypass the monitoring. So in the end all the online big brother stuff does is invade our privacy – it rarely picks up anything from the guilty as they cover their tracks.

It’s the same with blocking and filtering access to sites that we decide are no appropriate. You may argue that it’s right to filter websites with dangerous and criminal content – I would argue back it’s also normally just a huge waste of time. Any site that contains for instance illegal pornography can be copied and rehosted on a thousand other sites with ease. They can be encrypted, sent on usb keys or DVDs or hosted on darknet sites. In effect it’s a great big fat waste of time, the URL filtering slows down our surfing and the only thing you achieve is this

A completely false feeling that you’ve dealt with the problem, when of course you haven’t.
You’ve Blocked access to websites to people who weren’t going to use them anyway
Driven the criminals responsible for this further underground.

Let’s get this straight blocking the website of a paedophile ring does little to help the victim, other than pretending they don’t exist. What we need to do is cooperate and catch the criminals involved.

This is a perfect example of what should be happening – http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/press_releases/140_10/
, a racist uploading videos onto Youtube, don’t put resources into monitoring access, or filtering the web site out. Simply catch the people responsible and bring them to justice.