The OrigF/clred
Member
1st – let me get my qualifications out there beforehand - i am not much above the "fred flintstone" of computer and computer programing – but this involves security and i'm surprised to see there no mention of TAILS here on ICMag
i was a visitor to the orig Silk Road website, mainly cause i thought it was a hoot to visit, the drama i saw there was better than any crime TV show.
But the 2nd reason I visited, i loved their security forum. Learned a lot about security and the pitfalls we all commonly make, identifying ourselves on the internet. They had a full step by step instructions for using TAILS. Tails stands for The Amnesiac Incognito Live system, or a linux operating system that had been modified to delete any traces of where you'd been. The beauty was you could install it on a thumbdrive, shut your computer down and reboot with the thumbdrive in one of the USB ports of your computer, and the computer would boot off the operating system on the thumbdrive.
The 2nd layer to the security was the fact that Tails came with a TOR browser already pre-installed. If you don't know what TOR is, TOR = The Onion Router. TOR was designed by the US Navy in mid 90s to enable military personnel overseas to browse or email without revealing their location. How it works is, there are TOR servers around the world (a good number are privately owned, not govt servers). The TOR network uses .onion in the urls, not .com, .org etc. But the TOR software, when a packet goes to a TOR server, it only shows that server ID of the sending server but not any IDs on the servers it passed thru before hand. The tor software routes any browsing thru 4-5 servers around the world, so even if you were US based, and trying to hit ebay here in the US, ebay would be getting the signal from a server in czechslovakia or madagascar, literally. And the tor software did not show your true IP address - it would substitute an anonymous IP address.
But for browsing and keeping who you were anonymous, it's perfect. The fact that serious druggies around the world were running it and surviving played a factor in convincing me. Plus there were some pretty sharp computer software literate individuals in the security forums with the “do’s and don’ts” described.
The negative is the browsing experience is somewhat slower – think fast dialup or DSL speed vs broadband because your signal is bouncing around the planet thru a few other servers.
BTW, the Silk Road went down, not because of NSA or DEA breaking their security (or the TOR network) but because the idiot that owned broke the basic rule - after selling a large qty of a white powder ($27K worth) to a buyer, then became "friendly" with that buyer and ended up trying to hire him to "hit" someone, and that buyer proved to be an undercover FBI agent. He’d also left some clues to his identity (like his real email address)in various other forums, some were software writers’ forums, that helped the feds to identify himself.
Installing TAILs on a thumbdrive requires two thumbdrives, but does not affect your desktop's operating system - it remains the exact same.
I had copied and saved the installation instructions – and they got a computer idiot like me to successfully install. First time took me over 1 & ½ hours but after that, installing on a spare thumbdrive, updating TAILS etc, 20-30 minutes . If folks are interested, I can post those instructions, then maybe the computer guru members can help with any installation issues.
For more info on TAILS - https://tails.boum.org/ i believe the phrase is "it's open sourced software", so it's been inspected / checked out to not have any backdoors, hidden spy whatevers
Don't know if folks are aware of this, it has come out that windows (as did a number of others) gave the gov't a backdoor (to your computer) in all their operating systems, i think since the 32bit version of XP was the last system that didn't come with it - but the updates to it slip that backdoor in. That means if big brother is watching you post, and you say something that intrigues him/her, he can slip into your computer, and monitor you up close and personal. I know that gives me the "warm & fuzzies".
Let me know and i'll post those instructions
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i was a visitor to the orig Silk Road website, mainly cause i thought it was a hoot to visit, the drama i saw there was better than any crime TV show.
But the 2nd reason I visited, i loved their security forum. Learned a lot about security and the pitfalls we all commonly make, identifying ourselves on the internet. They had a full step by step instructions for using TAILS. Tails stands for The Amnesiac Incognito Live system, or a linux operating system that had been modified to delete any traces of where you'd been. The beauty was you could install it on a thumbdrive, shut your computer down and reboot with the thumbdrive in one of the USB ports of your computer, and the computer would boot off the operating system on the thumbdrive.
The 2nd layer to the security was the fact that Tails came with a TOR browser already pre-installed. If you don't know what TOR is, TOR = The Onion Router. TOR was designed by the US Navy in mid 90s to enable military personnel overseas to browse or email without revealing their location. How it works is, there are TOR servers around the world (a good number are privately owned, not govt servers). The TOR network uses .onion in the urls, not .com, .org etc. But the TOR software, when a packet goes to a TOR server, it only shows that server ID of the sending server but not any IDs on the servers it passed thru before hand. The tor software routes any browsing thru 4-5 servers around the world, so even if you were US based, and trying to hit ebay here in the US, ebay would be getting the signal from a server in czechslovakia or madagascar, literally. And the tor software did not show your true IP address - it would substitute an anonymous IP address.
But for browsing and keeping who you were anonymous, it's perfect. The fact that serious druggies around the world were running it and surviving played a factor in convincing me. Plus there were some pretty sharp computer software literate individuals in the security forums with the “do’s and don’ts” described.
The negative is the browsing experience is somewhat slower – think fast dialup or DSL speed vs broadband because your signal is bouncing around the planet thru a few other servers.
BTW, the Silk Road went down, not because of NSA or DEA breaking their security (or the TOR network) but because the idiot that owned broke the basic rule - after selling a large qty of a white powder ($27K worth) to a buyer, then became "friendly" with that buyer and ended up trying to hire him to "hit" someone, and that buyer proved to be an undercover FBI agent. He’d also left some clues to his identity (like his real email address)in various other forums, some were software writers’ forums, that helped the feds to identify himself.
Installing TAILs on a thumbdrive requires two thumbdrives, but does not affect your desktop's operating system - it remains the exact same.
I had copied and saved the installation instructions – and they got a computer idiot like me to successfully install. First time took me over 1 & ½ hours but after that, installing on a spare thumbdrive, updating TAILS etc, 20-30 minutes . If folks are interested, I can post those instructions, then maybe the computer guru members can help with any installation issues.
For more info on TAILS - https://tails.boum.org/ i believe the phrase is "it's open sourced software", so it's been inspected / checked out to not have any backdoors, hidden spy whatevers
Don't know if folks are aware of this, it has come out that windows (as did a number of others) gave the gov't a backdoor (to your computer) in all their operating systems, i think since the 32bit version of XP was the last system that didn't come with it - but the updates to it slip that backdoor in. That means if big brother is watching you post, and you say something that intrigues him/her, he can slip into your computer, and monitor you up close and personal. I know that gives me the "warm & fuzzies".
Let me know and i'll post those instructions
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