Anonymous Torrent Downloading And File Sharing

The book I read to research this post was Complete Guide To Anonymous Torrent Downloading And File Sharing by Matthew Bailey which is a very good book that I read on kindle unlimited. This book is quite short and concise probably around 90 pages. It is about downloading torrent files which consist of text file with information about the file and an actual download file which is normally something like a film, mp3, software or any of a wide range of file types. Torrent files have come in for a lot of criticism with people abusing it and downloading copyrighted stuff and because the people doing the downloading also automatically upload it to other users which speeds up the process of the downloads and many are justifiably concerned about data protection on their computers. Ideally if you are doing torrent downloading you want to do it anonymously especially without people getting of your personal information. I have only read this book because I find this topic but I think I’d shy away from actually doing it. For a start your ISP can cut your bandwidth, report you the police and suspend your internet contract if they find out. Torrent files have the .torrent extension. There is a torrent site at http://vuze.com if you do want to get started doing this. The Tor browser and Hotspot Shield browsers while being great for surfing the net anonymously offer no support for downloading torrent files so you have to find another way. Both of these browsers are free and route your internet activity through hundreds of others making it almost impossible to trace you. There is a tool at http://peerblock.com that will check anyone getting access to your files against a blacklist and block the worst offenders. You need a vpn account of some type to limit other peoples access to files on your computer. There is http://www.cogipas.com/purevpn. There is also a torrent site at http://vodo.net where you can download files of indie movies people have posted. I did thoroughly enjoy reading this book although I think there is probably more to learn about this subject although the book does a good job and I would definitely recommend it.

The Tor Browser

The book I read to research this post was Really Private Browsing by Andre Infante which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is rather short at around 20 pages and is about using the Tor Browser which can be downloaded at http://www.torproject.org and is a way to covertly surf the internet. In some countries Tor is illegal and presents potentially a major headache for anyone like the police who might want to find out what you have been doing on the internet. Funnily enough it was developed by the US Navy and has a near unbreakable algorithm. It also reroutes if an entity tries to find your identity or location among thousands of volunteers so they have little chance of tracing you. Most people using Tor are probably using it for illegal reasons but there is also people like political dissidents or even just living in dictatorships who just want unbiased news about what is going on. I personally have little use for Tor being British but am interested in this sort of thing. Sites which work with Tor have the .onion extension. There is also an  anonymous chat extension called TorChat. Chat programs in general are notorious for being security risks and are easy to hack into. If you use a search engine like Google your search is recorded and can be used in a legal investigation. TorSearch is an anonymous search engine that works with Tor and doesn’t keep records of your searches. There is also Tor Mail Hidden Service at http://jhiwjjlqpyawmpjx.onion this is a email provider that is apparently completely secure and all your emails are encrypted. If you run into problems with Tor there is a support address at help@rt.torproject.org. The browser interface is very similar to Firefox and when you install it you are usually asked to update the client which is something it’s best to do for it to work. It works with linux, windows or mac. I did really enjoy this book and it’s a shame it’s not a longer book. Of course I recommend it.

The Dark Net

The book I read to research this post was The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett which is an excellent book that I bought on Kindle. The book is currently the top selling computer book on kindle at the moment. The dark net is quite a hot topic at the moment and there have been quite a few short books on the some free but this is the first full length book I’ve come across. The book tends to look at the alternate side of the internet not just the dark net which is websites not indexed by the search engines. Of course some people have a genuine reason for going on the dark net like people in oppressive regimes seeking an unbiased version of the news. The top drug dealing sites on the dark net make millions of dollars per annum. People use mostly bitcoins to pay for their purchases and hopefully they send it by courier if it is sent. There is something called britcoins where you can do a transaction in pounds sterling rather than converting to dollars. You have to use the tor browser with the dark net and this is a browser that hides your identity and uses the IP address of volunteers to hide your activity. There are pornographic sites like chaturbate that don’t use the dark net and are in the book nonetheless. These kind of sites have often become a brand in their own right. They hire people like college girls to have a web cam in their room and take video calls for money. On a site like this their will typically be a 20 minute wait if you have the free option or you get through sooner if you pay. Many of the girls are quite ordinary looking and not necessarily what you might associate with a model. Jamie the author went around interviewing people for the book and much of it is what people said in interviews. Cam-models often have to spend hours on social media sites getting punters and it isn’t just them taking their clothes off. It is very much a full time job. There was a site called voyeurdorm where some college students lived in a house with assorted webcams around it and people could watch their day to day activity. There is of course a dark side to all this. There was a 13 year old called Justin Berry in 2000 who set up a webcam and initially he got offered $50 to take off his shirt and the amounts of money involved got more and more and the acts got more and more extreme. The site did get closed down but it became the earliest example of a minor getting sexually abused on a webcam site. I did thoroughly enjoy this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it. I think the information tends to pertain to the British market but there is plenty of interest.

The Art Of Anonymity

The book I read to research this post was The Art Of Anonymity by Nathan Carlyle which is an excellent book that I bought from kindle. This book is only short around 45 pages but contains a lot of interesting information and is quite easy to understand so I was quite impressed by it. The book is about hiding your online identity which in some cases like if you are a pro democracy activist from China might be quite justifiable. It isn’t just about people doing things like buying recreational drugs. Your top priority in this kind of thing is probably hiding your IP address from which your location can be traced. Bear in mind your ISP probably has this information and if you are breaking the law will probably pass it on to the police. There is a website called Infosniper that will let you check what IP address and location is visible. There is also a website called Private Internet Access that for $7 per month will hide your location and IP address although it is probably still visible to your ISP. They also suggest you use the Tor browser at http://www.torproject.org which is a necessity to visit .onion or darknet sites. There is a directory of dark net sites at http://torlinksysgthcbz.onion. You of course have to be careful what you view on dark net sites which aren’t indexed by google and are literally like the wild west as far as censorship is concerned. I must admit I personally would avoid them but I can see for people like those living in oppressive regimes it may be useful. I enjoy reading books about the dark net and internet privacy anyway. If you want an e-mail provider that is free and doesn’t sell the information from your e-mails to some marketing company try hushmail.com. You have to check your account every 3 weeks or it gets deleted. There is also trashmail.com where you can hire an e-mail account for a specific period. A lot of these kinds of accounts can still be traced back to you. A good anonymous one is silentsender.com. They do suggest for anonymous payments over the internet the non top up type cards you can buy in supermarkets are pretty good. These are loaded with a specific amount and if they are the type you can top up they normally require a social security number which exposes your identity. Another option is bitcoins which among other sites you can get from coinbase.com. Bear in mind you often give information when you buy these that can be used to trace you. A couple of sites which help hide this information are localbitcoins.com & bitcoin.fog with the later routing the payment through several accounts to make it harder to trace. This is definitely an interesting book that I would recommend, has far more information than what I’ve written about and I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

 

 

 

Online Anonymous

The book I read to research this post was Online Anonymous by Ben Evans which is an excellent book which I downloaded from kindle. This is only a very short but is free on kindle and I think is good enough to part with cash for definitely. The book does say for some people there are legitimate reasons to hide their web presence like they live in a country that has a dictatorship or want to avoid identity theft. If you are on a social media it is worth going in as a visitor and checking what is displayed publicly on your profile. Often people synchronize these sites with their smartphone and information like their address and phone number is displayed publicly in their profile even though they didn’t intend for that to happen. Often an identity thief will follow you around the internet checking the sites you regularly visit collecting information along the way. There are anonymous email providers like http://mytrashmail.com that will let you use an email account anonymously for a specific period. If you wish to browse anonymously there is an internet browser called The Onion Ring or Tor which you can download at https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en This browser was financed by the naval intelligence in America and works by using other computers to appear like you are using them and hiding your internet activity. There is a browser that does a similar job on Android Phones where you download orbot and orweb. On the iPhone there is covert browser priced at $2.99 that does a similar job and apparently they charge for that because they have to pay a subscription to have it listed. Bear in mind with some sites if you are logging in anonymously it can cause problems particularly if you are buying stuff. I really enjoyed this book and think I probably wouldn’t do something like use Tor browser to surf the internet but obviously for some people especially in a totalitarian regime it’s essential. Bear in mind also your ISP stores a lot of information about you which if a security service got a subpoena would have no choice but to hand over.