How to post safely and anonymously

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AssTechWarrior
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How to post safely and anonymously

Post by AssTechWarrior »

How to post text and images here without risking your privacy.

At boundAnna we are all similar in that we share an interesting passion. Many of us would not like our friends, the comunity or their church to know about what makes us smile. For those of you who are fully OK with being public I am proud and a bit jealous. I need to stay a bit more private. :( I probably could visit with my home PC and nothing would ever come of it, I'm not really trying to hide but you never know, one day I could run for office.

The easiest way to stay private is to never visit a site like BoundAnna, never join and never post anything but you are missing out when you don't share.

Another alternative would be using public computers or coffee shops but that is bad for the people who might be offended if they happened to see what you were reading and you still leave a trail to the general area and computer.

Then there is the issue of pictures. digital cameras leave fingerprints of sorts on the pictures, often a serial number, camera phones are even worse, they might have your IMEI, GPS and even phone number stored in meta-data.

On a PC you can dump the metadata, change the image format, then size, then recompress and now you have an anonymous image but you need to get it to the forum so you can share it.

There is a free, very effective solution available that you probably have heard of. It is The Onion Router also comprised of TOR. This tool routes your connection through a bunch of encrypted servers and it comes out somewhere else on the globe. The server logs won't show your real IP, nobody in the TOR logs the connections and you can switch to another exit node as often as you wish.

Running TOR on your own PC under your windows isn't the best way since you may be leaking data via the browser so you really want to run it on a clean compewter with no personal info on it.

There is a free solution here. It's called TAILS and it is download a bootable image and burn it to DVD and stick it in your laptop and reboot to it. Tails is available here: https://tails.boum.org/ Developped for journalists in danger places like the midle east it was meant to allow posting of sotries withouot a trace.

Using Tails to make it very difficult to determine the source of a posting or file, major government organizations with 3 letters can probably trace it back to you but short of a national security or CP situation they aren't going to waste the resources so don't do pedo crap or terror stuff using this advice, instead just go climb in a hole.

Plug in your network cable or use a comp with wifi. So boot TAILS and if you don't know lilnux, when it asks if you want advanced click YES. Select windows camoflage and it will look like windows instead of linux. Once it boots you have a private, read only OS running, no hard drive is needed and you can use an old crappy laptop. Once it has booted and the popup says you are connected, it takes about 2 minutes. Click the menu, go to internet and click TOR browser. When it loads, type in the website you want to visit.

For images, there is both GIMP and a nice paint like program for drawing. you can also stick in a usb and open the pictures in GIMP to edit it. For getting rid of information stored in the picture there is a program called MAT under the system tools menu. Run that before you post any images, click 'ADD' then 'Check' and if it is dirty, click 'scour'. Your picture is clean and ready to upload.

The MetaData Anonymisation Toolkit or MAT is also part of the Tails distribution. Documentation is here: https://mat.boum.org/

Basic instructions from TAILS:
https://tails.boum.org/getting_started/index.en.html
https://tails.boum.org/
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bound_jenny
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by bound_jenny »

I'm not that paranoid.

Most ISPs assign dynamic IPs, so no specific address can by tagged onto anyone personally. You might ID the ISP, but that's about it.

I don't post photos of myself in compromising (i.e. fun) situations on the Internet, so I've got that covered.

If I do post a photo of anything close to me that I have photographed personally, I take out any EXIF or other data before posting it. In any case, my DSLR doesn't have a built in GPS (I usually know where I am, and I'm never drunk enough not to know). Even if my phone has a camera, I very rarely use it as a camera (hint: it's a phone).

None of the information I put in my profile is enough to identify me without going through mucho trouble and money (anyone with that much money to waste should simply make a marriage proposal and get it over with - I can spend it much more sensibly).

But then, as WKRP's Johnny Fever put it, "When everyone's out to get you, paranoid is good thinking!". :rofl:

Jenny.
Helplessness is a doorway to the innermost reaches of the soul.
If my corset isn't tight, it just isn't right!
Kink is the spice of life!
Come to the Dark Side - we have cookies!
tiemeupalso
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by tiemeupalso »

also remember that just because you are NOT paranoid,doesnt mean SOMEBODY isnt out to get you that you dont know about:)
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bounddosster
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by bounddosster »

bound jenny, What is EXIF and how do you remove it ?
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
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bound_jenny
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by bound_jenny »

bounddosster wrote:bound jenny, What is EXIF and how do you remove it ?
I'd say take a look at http://forum.boundanna.net/board/viewto ... =14&t=8662

EXIF data is extra information added to image files, such as camera make and model, exposure time, focal ratio, etc., and.... if the camera (or camera-equipped device) is so equipped, GPS coordinates. Phones and tablets are very often equipped with GPS receivers, and unless the option is expressly turned off, GPS data will be recorded with the image. You can remove such data using some popular image editing software.

More info can be dug up by using your favorite web search engine.

Jenny.
Helplessness is a doorway to the innermost reaches of the soul.
If my corset isn't tight, it just isn't right!
Kink is the spice of life!
Come to the Dark Side - we have cookies!
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bounddosster
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by bounddosster »

Oh, I knew about that info but I didn't know that was what it was called. You learn something new everyday.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
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ponylady
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by ponylady »

another easy solution to assure some privacy on shared comps is using a portable 'fox on an usb-stick.
make sure all profile-, cache-, etc.-paths lead back to the stick and you're set.

it won't prevent the nsa from finding you, but nosy roommates will have their work cut out for them.
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BornThisWay
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by BornThisWay »

Before I post an image taken with my cell phone or digital camera I view the picture on my screen and use "snipping tool" I drag a window around the picture and save it.

This will ensure that no meta data from the original picture is transferred to the new picture.

Snipping tool is pre-installed on Windows and can be found on your hard drive at:
C:\Windows\System32\SnippingTool.exe

Just create a short cut to it to your desktop or task bar for easy access.

Won't solve all the potential dangers but will definitely take care of removing any GPS locations etc.
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qwerty212
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by qwerty212 »

LoKiT has been working in a script to clean pictures of any kind of metadata (not just exif). Is called Jmet:

Image

Image

Image

I've tried it under Win7 (x86 and x64) and under Lubuntu and it works like charm, so I guess that a public release will come sooner rather than later.
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bounddosster
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by bounddosster »

While on the privacy theme, I was wondering which search engines people use, I use ixquick it is surpose to be the most private but still functional and I find it pretty fast as well.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
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xhr92
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by xhr92 »

qwerty212 wrote:LoKiT has been working in a script to clean pictures of any kind of metadata (not just exif). Is called Jmet:

Image

Image

Image

I've tried it under Win7 (x86 and x64) and under Lubuntu and it works like charm, so I guess that a public release will come sooner rather than later.
On GNU/Linux there is a much simpler solution 8)

Code: Select all

exiv2 rm IMG_*.JPG
As for anonymity, here are my recommendations:
  • use full disk encryption (this doesn't protect you against everything, but it's a good start to prevent a thief/roommate from snooping in your private data). If you like to keep your computer on (or use suspend-to-ram), use a lock screen.
  • use Tor if you think your sysadmin/ISP may be spying on you ; note that in this case, you should not log in since the person running the exit node can hijack your session. Unless the site supports HTTPS, there is no way around this.
  • triple check that anything you post (images, etc) cannot identify you (via EXIF or other means). Host your images on the forum. If you use another image-sharing site (imgur, etc) make sure it cannot be traced back to you. Definitely don't use your personal website to host them.
  • use a different email address (with a false identity) for all site purposes. Don't forward it to your main address, check it manually from time to time or use a local pop/imap client.
tiemeupalso
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Re: How to post safely and anonymously

Post by tiemeupalso »

its simple.if you dont want everyone to see it dont put it out there.
on the other hand if everybody on the internet did that the internet would be a very boreing place.
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