On 15 July 2013 02:46, Gabrielle wrote: > > The question is this: How would not being completely anonymous while > watching "Like a Surgeon" on IE affect my anonymity while using the Tor > path to get to reading about more intense subjects?
Every time you leak your personal information, your ISP and maybe your government has a record. A data point. What you like, sure, but what you don't like factors in as well. For instance, let's say you often visit the NHL web site to check up on hockey scores. And that you click on... provocative adverts. But you never visit woman's wear shopping sites. Looking at the totality of the record, one might reasonably assume you were male, despite your user name. Little by little, bit by bit, the electronic dossier grows and grows. This gradual accumulation of personal information is why you'll often read advice to go anonymous all the time. Then you leak much less personal information. Thinking this way is not easy for those of us who grew up on an open society; others of us have learnt the hard way to protect our personal information. So turn the question upside down for a moment: How would being anonymous affect you watching 'Like a Surgeon'? The problem is that there are many things running in the background which use the internet without you actively running it. For instance, Microsoft's Time of Day service and Microsoft Update, Google Update, and the Java, Firefox and Adobe updaters all run silently in the background and periodically wake up to see if something needs attention. Every one of these leaks your IP address and probably more than that. > Also, how would online shopping be affected? Credit cards are a different problem altogether. Clearly, if you were to buy something online - whether using Tor or the open internet - the credit card company knows who you are and what you bought. In most jurisdictions, this information is available to the government if they ask for it. > As for Tails, can someone give me a primer on that? Tails is a complete operating system intended to be secure / use Tor from the get-go. You download the .iso file and burn that image to a DVD. Then you put the DVD in the DVD drive and reboot the PC. The machine will boot Tails off of the DVD and you will be running a secure, (mostly) anonymous operating system. You can surf knowing that Adobe isn't sending 'usage statistics' behind your back like it does with Windows. When your 'private' session is over, take out the DVD, reboot and you're back to leaky Windows. There's no configuration you need to tinker with on your computer, no strange interactions between various applications, no wondering 'did this new program upset the apple cart?' It's completely separate from Windows. It's sort of like having a second computer without having to actually buy a second computer. Plus, you can take the DVD with you and surf anonymously at a friend's house if you wish. _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list [email protected] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
