Web Anonymity

[gav]

Recently I visited a web site....can't remember which off hand....but it told me that I was surfing insecurely and recommended that I "buy" there Anonymity software ? It came up with all my ISP details in brief...but enough information to concern me.

Should I be using some other sort of protection and if so can anyone recommend some, preferably a Free version

Regards

Gav

[Inka]

In my opinion, so long as you are using a good firewall & anti virus you are reasonably safe. Other PC's should be unable to get into your system & You are unlikely to get attacked by viruses.

As for the annonymity bit, your PC does identify itself on the internet (something to do with how it all works) but its nothing much to worry about.

There are things around for the paranoid amongst us that will hide even more of your details. Depends how paranoid you are! My view - dont worry about it.

[jeeza]

Sure - don't worry, be happy, eh ?
Inka, I think you are too quick to shrug it all off as paranoia (I noticed this is a very popular word in cyberspace, and I think it is mainly used to lull worried users into a - to me - false sense of security).
That statement "nothing much to worry about" may be statistically valid, meaning that most users may indeed not experience any harmful effects, but in my opinion each should examine his own situation for himself in order to be able to judge whether or not he is a part of this statistical - and "silent" - majority.

[Inka]

Duley noted Jeeza!... I did, however, state it was My opinion & Gav was asking for opinions :)

I do believe that many people are unnecesarily worried about cyberspace & there are some unscrupulous people out there who will prey on those fears. (Again, my opinion!) Common sense will keep most people safe (dont give out your bank details etc) Have been surfing for almost 10 years with no ill effects, other than square eyes occasionally... :)

[gav]

Thanks guys,

Good comments so far.
In my opinion the more of my "Private" info that I can keep to myself the better.

If anyone else would like to comment I would be interested, especially with advice on s/w to try to keep me annonamous I suppose



Gav

[david eaton]

Originally posted by gav
It came up with all my ISP details in brief...but enough information to concern me.

Well, yes, it would. If that site did not know your IP address, it would not be able to send the page to the right place!

This sort of thing is on a par with the javascript that shows a directory of your C drive, to persuade you that you are being investigated for child porn!

Any company that has to resort to such subterfuges in order to sell it's product cannot have a very good product to start with.

[Budfred]

The people who run those ads are usually the people that you have to worry about protecting yourself from. They take advantage of the basic way that the internet works to scare you into buying their product and it turns out that their product is spyware, adware, trojan, hijacking, dialing, data mining, keylogging and general nusiance vermin. As Inka said, you need a good firewall, an antivirus that you keep up to date and something like SpywareBlaster to protect against spyware. It isn't a bad idea to run an occasional scan with Spybot and/or AdAware as well....

If you use something like Kazaa, you will certainly have problems. If you hand out in any file sharing area or a number of other types of sites, you are more likely to have to deal with malware. You have a lot of control over what you are exposed to...

You can spend most of your time online figuring out to get more invisible and protect yourself or you can take reasonable precautions and then get help if you actaully do run into trouble. I recently dealt with the Blaster worm for the first time that I have had anything worse than spyware. This happened because I was checking my security, messed up my connection and in fixing it, I was briefly vulnerable. Otherwise, I have been online since well before the internet and never had problems of a significant nature.

[shanmuga]

originally posted by Budfred
The people who run those ads are usually the people that you have to worry about protecting yourself from. They take advantage of the basic way that the internet works to scare you into buying their product and it turns out that their product is spyware, adware, trojan, hijacking, dialing, data mining, keylogging and general nusiance vermin. I agree fully.

@ gav

If you feel that the site you mention was able to reveal so much information about you, visit the link below and try out a few tests to find out how much information your browser is sending when accessing different websites

http://gemal.dk/browserspy/

IMO there is a difference between surfing privately and surfing anonymously. Privacy is keeping what you do in private -secret whereas anoymity is keeping your identity secret when interacting with others. The Internet may not be as anonymous as you have thought. However, there are steps you can take to protect your privacy and cover your tracks, like Budfred mentioned. These also include deleting your cache, deleting or refusing cookies, and connecting through a proxy. This is a subject too involved to be discussed here. Check out the link below, which should give you a considerable knowledge about the subject. Be aware that you are likely to become an expert in 'surfing anoymously and maintaining privacy in internet' If you go through even half of the links provided in the page.:D
http://www.epic.org/privacy/tools.html

[jeeza]

Originally posted by Budfred
I recently dealt with the Blaster worm for the first time that I have had anything worse than spyware. This happened because I was checking my security, messed up my connection and in fixing it, I was briefly vulnerable. Otherwise, I have been online since well before the internet and never had problems of a significant nature.
What I find very significant here, Budfred, is that you only had been vulnerable for a very short span of time, and this was all you needed to get, for the very first time as I understand, that kind of nuisance.
I think that no further comment is needed.
However... I feel tempted to add that this is somewhat equivalent to someone in the trenches, sticking his head out and getting hit.

[jeeza]

jeeza said
However... I feel tempted to add that this is somewhat equivalent to someone in the trenches, sticking his head out and getting hit.
Maybe I should have explained : what I meant is that it's much like a real war going on, with very real danger.

[YODA74]

I have been online since well before the internet

Hmmm seems there was no personal computers before 1970 nor was there any line for the general public offered That could be affordable. This would mean that you had to work for lockheed,Nasa, federal gov.
There was CIRC(Centralized Indexing and Reference Control system)
COLEX (CIRC OnLine EXperiment)in 68??

[pentachris]

Maybe he meant before the WWW (ie. BBS's).

[YODA74]

well ya as we know it, it's only been around since the mid 80's before that early 70's was Dialog and ORBIT these were not offered nor affordable for public use, before that it was Batch processing tape spinning punch cards

[Budfred]

Yes, I meant before what is now known as the Internet. I am aware that the government and science centers had an internet before the web, but it really wasn't available to the public and certainly wasn't anything like it is today. I was on BBS setups for years before the Web blossomed, as I imagine that many of us older types around here were... Originally at 300 baud too...:p

[mjc]

I made the comment the other day in a chatroom....

"I remember when AOL was just a BBS...."

And you haven't lived until you were trying to get to a BBS at 300 with and acoustic coupled modem that the phone just didn't want to sit in the rubber cups correctly....DUCT TAPE fixes all :D

[YODA74]

For those that have never seen it or used it looks like the pic below.. and you can still try it

[Abbadon]

I would think the biggest danger on the web is ignorance, as in: not knowing how, what, when,... the dangers are and how to avoid them.

As mentioned earlier, a good / up to date firewall and antivirus should keep you safe. After that, it's a matter of keeping them updated and staying in touch with the latest news on security-issues, running regular scans,...

I don't think it's possible to be 100% safe, but with those common sense-measures in place, "they" (whomever "they" may be :cool: ) would realy have to be after you, and trying hard at it, to do any real harm.


On a side note: my first internet-experience is about eight or ten years ago, and it involved a page about the movie "Alien" which took about 10 minutes to load at that time. As I remember, I didn't care much for it. How the times (and specificly: the bandwiths) have chagned :p

[pentachris]

Originally posted by pentachris
Maybe he meant before the WWW (ie. BBS's).

Budfred responded
Yes, I meant before what is now known as the Internet.

Not exactly what I meant, though. Look (http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/Web_vs_Internet.asp).