Internet anonymity

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Based on a thread below, I'm even more paranoid than usual about this issue.
To be clear, I am NOT doing anything dodgy online that I don't want found out. The old argument of if you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't be worried about people finding out goes against the very idea of personal privacy. I'm well aware that any kind of privacy is hard to come by in today's world but Internet privacy is especially worrisome. As someone pointed out, even an account on an autism forum could lose you jobs if potential employers trawl for any information. I once had an unofficial check done on me I assume in a similar fashion which found posts I had made at a book review site years ago - as I said, all perfectly innocent, but I did not want the people from this group reading all about what I thought of a particular book years ago.
What are the best ways to maintain privacy online, to prevent any kind of snooping? Is this even possible anymore? I toyed with the idea of downloading Tor to try and minimise it, but was stayed by the potential for viruses and ironically enough, snooping from others using it.
Ideas?

there's a sticky on it here.

viewtopic.php?t=169368

avoiding identification online by those that know you isn't extreme difficult with the use of common sense. in short, don't use avatar images that can be traced back to you. common pop culture images are good. refrain from using your real name. if you sue phrase in conversation with others that are 'distinctive' with you, try to avoid using them to much online.

if there is something you have posted on this specific site you want redacted, you can PM a mod and make a case to have it removed.

Can posting on Wrong Planet really cause someone to lose their jobs? I have never heard of this, and it seems like paranoia to me. Frankly I really don't care if someone identifies me online. I am on disability, there is a zero % chance of me ever working again, and people already hate me in real life. All I do is isolate in my apartment, no crazy person could do anything unless someone finds themselves on one of the top floors of one of downtown Nashville's high rises. Even then the building I am in has security and other means to keep people out that I suppose I won't post least some crazy vigilante against autistic people actually track what building I am in. Honestly though I don't care, no one can hurt me online anymore than the people in my actual life have. Plus if anyone is crazy enough to come into my lair, I have pepper spray, a knife and a crossbow, feel free to enter

I deleted my facebook anyway which is a huge source of privacy concerns, I couldn't take the drama. It was nothing more than people I know arguing about rather I am autistic or rather I am a jerk on MY facebook wall. I was seriously people?

Well theoretically, being found to be posting on Wrong Planet might cause a problem if someone who can have an influence on your life is ignorant, bigoted or fearful of a thing like autism, and can avail themselves of a way to reject you for being on the spectrum in such a way that doesn't expose them to the laws designed to protect this from happening.

For example, I'm self employed. My work depends on standing-appointment clients. If one of them finds out I have an ASD, and if she might possibly believe that makes me Adam Lanza, or that her children are not safe near me, or any other stupid stuff, she has the perfect right to "let me go" by making excuses such as "I've got to tighten my budget" or "We're leaving town."

I can't get her prosecuted, can't prove she found out I have ASD and that she fired me because of prosecutable prejudice against autistic people.

But just say that is what she fired me for, because she found me posting under my real name on WP?

That's one arguably fair and just reason not to have a real name online. Because OTHER people can have twisted ideas even if what YOU are doing is "nothing wrong."

In a more general way, another good reason to stay anonymous online is that there are individuals out there insane enough that they can and do latch onto someone they've taken a dislike to online, and hunt them down in real life. It doesn't happen a lot but it has happened. There are threats made online that SOME people have actually carried out, finding the person for real and harassing them.

Again, it's against the law but that doesn't stop some people.

Once, on another forum website, I was laughed out of the room for saying this stuff. But it was a bunch of men and boys.

I'm a woman, I live alone, and I have an unusual real name. It would be NOTHING, really easy, for some hateful individual to find out my address and other details instantly, and make my life hell if they're psychopathic enough to do so. And some people actually are.

Celebrities get stalkers but at least they have the money and power to nip it in the bud. Private citizens don't have the kind of help at hand when a stranger sees THEIR true identity on the web and goes after them. This is why screennames were ever invented as the thing to do online in the first place, and why it's so dangerous, in my opinion, that Facebook and even at one time Youtube (now rescinded) wanted real names on accounts.

There are nasty people out there who fck with you online and would take that into real life if they could find you. I've been trolled VERY badly by someone who turned out to be an actual prosecuted stalker of a celebrity. I'm no celebrity but imagine if THAT guy had my real name too?

It's not a good idea for women to just put their names and pictures out there for all.

BirdInFlight,

I agree with what you have wrote but I think it depends on who you are, your self employed so its important to remain anonymous but for some, its less important. I get trolled, bullied, and harassed daily by people in my actual life. I dare someone to add to that, I really wouldn't be effected by it. For you, it can effect your reputation, I have no reputation so its kind a mute point for me. Still, I don't make a habit of posting obvious things about me online but I don't care if someone finds out. I am ex-hacker and I don't say that for the coolness value of it, I actually have a rap sheet for hacking.

So I know that if someone is hell bent on finding and stalking you, they will regardless of what you post online. Nothing prevents that, somewhere on this server or connected server is your IP address and that can be used to at least narrow down what state you live in. nmap can tell you what operating system or router you are using and rather you are behind a proxy. There is no such thing as true anonymity and everything is hackable, even unix. Hell in the later days of my computing adventures before I just starting playing video games all day, I found a flaw in UDP where you can actually get around closed ports as if they were open and could use this to ssh into a remote server with closed port 22.

The only way to secure against this was to disable UDP completely, WEP wireless encryption is another piece of crap that gives a false sense of security, I have gotten past that in minutes, WPA in a few days. I don't mean to sound like I have a tin foil hat but nothing you connect online is safe. Thats why companies have offline networks called intranets that are separated from any outside network, like the internet. If you have a cable connected from your computer to the wall, you and your data is vulnerable, boom. Take that how you want but its true.

Point is this, anonymity is only as important as you make it. Nothing is secure, crazy people can hunt you down anyway if they have skill.

Whoops, sticky. Thanks I'll check that out.
From my perspective I'm mot concerned about crazies tracking me down and attacking me - I am able to defend myself or get away if outmatched, plus being always on the move means I'm not likely to be where they'd be looking for me by the time they do. Its more about privacy. I get very particular about privacy. I don't want to be watched. I don't like the idea of people being able to find out any information on me that I didn't choose to tell them, even if it was just a review of a book I liked.
This is for both personal reasons, meeting new people or groups of people, but also with my health looking up so much I am very keen to get back into work, and don't want my chances spoiled by potential employers "googling me." So yeah, paranoid.
Plus, everyone's Internet history looks deranged. It might be as simple as looking up some word you heard and wondered what it meant, and it turns out to be a sixteenth century torture method where they pulled people's eyes out or something. I don't use my name for anything, and don't have Facebook, twitter, Instagram or any social media. But there are questions I have asked here which would be obvious to people who knew me if connected with my email, for example. I get all paranoid about people being able to find things out about what I've been doing online, and track me.
This may be due to having had an extremely controlling family for so long. Being convinced you're being tracked isn't paranoid when you are.

You could try a VPN instead of Tor. I use one called Private Internet Access. They don't keep any records of who has what IP & it's pretty good for file-sharing(which I do alot of). They charge by the month or you can buy a year subscription.

I simply use an alias linked to an alternative email (which does forward to my primary), which is good enough.
If officials want to find me, they will anyway, but for a casual snooper, simply not recognizing my name or email is all that's needed for anonymity.

I will also not give out my actual place of residence ("close to city X" is as specific as i get), name or pictures.


I use several aliases for different spots: my "game" one, the "ASD" one and my "real" one (the latter is for things as facebook and linkedin, the real-life online handles)

You can not be anonymous completely on the internet.
Some people use a tor which bounces you all around the world so it will take a very long time to unwind where you came from but the federal police are beyond that and will know everything you do.
There are ways around it all but only the most knowledgeable computers understand it. (no its not the 'deep web' as that is not anonymous in so many ways)
The only true anonymous way to surf the net besides building a computer from scratch is level 3 or above which cant be accessed by most people. If you have heard of the hacker group 'anonymous', it is mostly faked by those mistaken that its something anybody can put the icon in their youtube account and be a full fledged member but in reality it is a group of people that have access to level 3 internet which is why they chose the name they did.