Anonymity

Intro

Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”.

One way of enforcing this basic right in hostile environments is by means of anonymity, where attempts to connect an active agent to a specific person are blocked.

Acting anonymously is also a great way to help others with a high need for protection – the bigger the herd of sheep, the harder it is to target a specific one. An easy way to do so is by using Tor, a technique which routes internet traffic between users of a special software, thus making it untraceable to any specific IP address or person without having control over the whole network (and nobody has that yet in the case of the internet). A highly functional means to protect ones own identity is by using anonymous proxy servers and Virtual Private Networks (VPN).

Proxy

“An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy [server] computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It accesses the Internet on the user’s behalf, protecting personal information by hiding the client computer’s identifying information.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymizer)

The main purpose behind using a proxy is to hide or to change Internet address (IP address) assigned to user’s computer. There can be a few reasons for needing to do so, for example:

  • To anonymize access to particular server(s) and/or to obfuscate traces left in the log files of a web-server. For instance a user might need/want to access sensitive materials online (special materials, research topics or else) without triggering authorities attention.
  • To break through firewalls of corporations or repressive regimes. A corporation/government can limit or completely restrict Internet access for a particular IP address or a range of IP addresses. Hiding behind a proxy will help to trick these filters and access otherwise forbidden sites.
  • To watch online video and streams banned in your country due to legal issues.
  • To access websites and/or materials available only for IP addresses belonging to a specific country. For example, a user wants to watch a BBC video stream (UK-only) while not residing in the UK.
  • To access the Internet from a partially banned/blocked IP address. Public IP addresses can often have “bad reputation” (bandwidth abuse, scam or unsolicited email distribution) and be blocked by some web-sites and servers.

While a usual scenario would be to use proxy for accessing the Web (HTTP), practically Internet protocol can be proxied - i.e. sent via a remote server. Unlike a router, proxy server is not directly forwarding remote user requests but rather mediates those requests and echoes responses back to remote user’s computer.

Proxy (unless setup as “transparent”) does not allow direct communication to the Internet thus applications such as browsers, chat-clients or download applications need to be made aware of the proxy server (see Safer Browsing/Proxy settings chapter)

Tor

  • Tor prevents anyone from learning your location or browsing habits.
  • Tor is for web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote logins, and more.
  • Tor is free and open source for Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix, and Android. (https://www.torproject.org)

Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity, composed of client software and a network of servers which can hide information about users’ locations and other factors which might identify them. Imagine a message being wrapped in several layers of protection: every server needs to take off one layer, thereby immediately deleting the sender information of the previous server.

Use of this system makes it more difficult to trace Internet traffic to the user, including visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms. It is intended to protect users’ personal freedom, privacy, and ability to conduct confidential business, by keeping their internet activities from being monitored. The software is open-source and the network is free of charge to use.

Tor cannot and does not attempt to protect against monitoring the traffic entering and exiting the network. While Tor does provide protection against traffic analysis, it cannot prevent traffic confirmation (also called end-to-end correlation). End-to-End Correlation is a way of matching an online identity with a real person.

A recent case of this involved the FBI wanting to prove that the man Jeremy Hammon was behind an alias known to be responsible for several Anonymous attacks. Sitting outside his house, the FBI were monitoring his wireless traffic alongside a chat channel the alias was known to visit. When Jeremy went online in his apartment, inspection of the wireless packets revealed he was using Tor at the same moment the suspected alias associated with him came online in the surveilled chat channel. This was enough to incriminate Jeremy and he was arrested.

See section Safer Browsing/Using Tor for setup instructions.