In the last lecture, we've seen what are the tracking mechanisms used to track and collect information
about users online activities.
In this lecture I'll present to you several ways of remaining anonymous on the Internet.
We'll take it from the easiest technique, which offers the lowest level of anonymity to
the hardest one, that offers the highest possible level of anonymity.
Let's talk about incognito or private mode.
If you don't want your Web browser to remember your activity, you can browse the Web privately, in incognito
or private mode. Incognito mode runs in a separate window from your normal one and to start it
go to your browser menu and then click on" New Incognito window".
Note that’s called incognito in Chrome and private window in Firefox, Brave or Safari.
In this mode, your browser won't save your browsing history,
cookies and site data or any information entered in forms, files you download and bookmarks you create
will be kept.
Note that your activity isn't hidden from Web sites you visit, your admin or your Internet service provider.
When you want to exit the incognito mode, just close all private windows.
My advice is not to rely too much on the incognito mode. Even though it's helpful, sometimes it proved
that advertisement companies could track users easily,
even in private mode.
You can also install an ad blocker as a browser extension for content filtering and ad blocking.
There are ad blockers for each major Web browser.
An ad blocker or ad filter is a software capable of removing or altering online advertising in
a Web browser or an application. From the standpoint of an Internet user
an adblocker will protect our privacy by reducing the number of cookies, protect from malvertising
which are intrusive actions from the Adds, save bandwidth and offer a general better user experience.
Another solution to remain anonymous is to use the VPN service. VPN is an acronym for "virtual
private network" and allows you to connect to the destination, not directly as in the normal network communication,
but through a VPN server.
The VPN server will connect on your behalf to the desired destination server using its IP address,
meaning that your IP address will remain hidden.
Remember that your IP address is their identity on the Internet,
just like your home address.
To give you an example let's
suppose you are located in China and want to visit anonymously a Web site like Twitter.com
that's blocked. Without a special solution like a VPN
you cannot connect to that server because your service provider blocks it. Even if it were possible,
your activity would be tracked.
What you can do is to set up a VPN service and to use a VPN server located, for example, in London.
You'll connect to the VPN server in a secure manner, which in turn will connect on your behalf to the
website that was blocked.
In this example, the website does not see your real IP address, but only the IP address of the VPN
server, and your service provider or another government entity will not know that you are visiting.
twitter.com.
They'll see that you are just communicating with the VPN server in London.
So a VPN protects your data from being seen or tampered with.
There are lots of VPN service available,
just be sure to choose a good one.
Read the reviews and the other users’ opinion.
Note that the VPN gateway
can decrypt and read the traffic
so it’s important to be trustful and not to save any logs.
To set up a VPN service, you normally download and install a VPN clients software for your operating
system. Some of VPN services also offer the possibility to install only an extension for your browser.
Another way to remain anonymous is to use TOR, which is an implementation of onion routing, a technique
developed by the U.S. Navy in the mid 90s to secure military communications.
We'll dedicate our next to lectures to Tor because this is really important in the context of privacy and
anonymity.
For the moment, it's enough to know that installing and using the Tor browser, your online activity
will remain completely anonymous.
No one will ever know that you are visiting a website or what's the identity of that specific website.
If you want to take anonymity to the next level and to leave no trace, then use a Linux distro called
tails.
It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity.
It will help you use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship.
All connections to the Internet are forced to go through the Tor network.
It will leave no trace on the computer you are using unless you ask it explicitly.
Tales uses state of the art cryptographic tools to encrypt our files, emails and instant messaging.
Let's see how to use it!
First, go and download tails from its official website.
You can download a USB image if you want to boot it from a USB stick or run it in a VM.
In this example I’ll download the VM ISO file.
I've already done that to save time.
After downloading tails open Virtual Box or VM and create a new VM.
Give it a name, for example, Tails, its type is Linux and version other Linux, 64 bit.
And next.
I'll select the amount of ram to be allocated to the VM.
Let's say 2048 megabytes and next.
I do not want to create any virtual hard disk drive, it will run as a live distro and create.
OK, the VM was created, selecte it and go to settings.
Then in the storage area, I'll select the ISO file.
I'm clicking on empty live CD, and I am selecting the file I've just downloaded,
the ISO file.
And ok!
I'm starting tails.
After a few seconds, I see this window and I'm clicking on start tails.
If you want, you can adjust the language, the keyboard layout and so on.
And this is Tails.
You can browse the Internet completely
anonymously.
Let's start the TOR browser.
All connections will go through the TOR network.
In this case, I connected to Google.com using three relies one in Germany, a middle one in France
and an exit relay in Canada.
OK, that's all for the moment. The next lectures will be on Tor and onion routing.
Thank you.