VPNs and TOR: Anonymity on MESO-Rx

[Millard]

I highly recommend that everyone utilize TOR or a VPN.

Information about TOR can be found here:

TOR Project

There are also several VPNs that don't maintain logs of user activity. Here is a list of some of the ones I've come across that meet my own criteria e.g. no logs, bitcoin, etc. (Disclosure: I receive a commission from some of them.)

Private Internet Access

• Logs: None.
  
• Jurisdiction: United States
  
• Information-sharing: “We will not share any information with third parties without a valid court order. With that said, it is impossible to match a user to any activity on our system since we utilize shared IPs and maintain absolutely no logs.”
  
• Payment: Bitcoin

EarthVPN

• Logs: None.
  
• Jurisdiction: Northern Cyprus
  
• Information-sharing: “Under no circumstances we will provide any personal or private information to the third parties.”
  
• Payment: Bitcoin

NordVPN

• Logs: None.
  
• Jurisdiction: Panama
  
• Information-sharing: “Requests are ignored because we do not comply with those laws.”
  
• Payment: Bitcoin

https://www.ivpn.net/aff.php?aff=1182

• Logs: None.
  
• Jurisdiction: Malta
  
• Information-sharing: “We do not share data with 3rd parties. If law enforcement served us with a subpoena and compelled us to log traffic we would shut down the business before cooperating, and relocate to a new jurisdiction.”
  
• Payment: Bitcoin

BTGuard

• Logs: None.
  
• Jurisdiction: Canada
  
• Information-sharing: “We do not communicate with any third parties. The only event we would even communicate with a third-party is if we received a court order.”
  
• Payment: Bitcoin

TorGuard

• Logs: None.
  
• Jurisdiction: Nevis, West Indies
  
• Information-sharing: “We don’t share any information with anyone regarding our network or its users and won’t even consider communicating with a 3rd party unless they’ve first obtained adequate representation within our legal jurisdiction. Only in the event of an official court ordered ruling would we be forced to hand over blank hard drives. There’s nothing to hand over but an operating system.”
  
• Payment: Bitcoin

Source: Which VPN Services Take Your Anonymity Seriously? 2013 Edition | TorrentFreak

 

[1forthegeeks]

Millard,

Out of the VPNs listed, which is your favorite?

I have my eye on the one out of panama.

 

[itsthemind2013]

Millard,I am very interested in this topic. For my self and for others on this this forum. Im not familiar with companys that offer these services. Nor do I trust them. Any help would be so appreciated.

 

[itsthemind2013]

Im sorry I didnt see your name at the top of the post. I see you recommend those. I will look into further. Thanks Millard!

 

[bltchemistry]

Great Post. Especially since certain sources are accepting orders via PM. IMO, that really draws too much negative attention to this site. Source reviews and discussions are one thing, but open price lists and taking orders on this site seems risky to say the least. Perhaps I am paranoid, but I create a new email account for every order I make, and never access it from my regular IP address.

 

[Millard]

Millard,

Out of the VPNs listed, which is your favorite?

I have my eye on the one out of panama.

My favorite is Private Internet Access. In addition to the points above, I like the fact that the founder (Andrew Lee) is an outspoken privacy advocate; he's passionate about the issue:

[T]he members of our company are strongly passionate about protecting the civil liberties of individuals. It is a foregone conclusion that if our company ever received an invite or request to participate in PRISM or any other government surveillance program, that we would immediately challenge the request...

The philosophy guiding our company’s values are the same principles that guided our Founding Fathers when they drafted the U.S. Constitution to respect the fundamental right to privacy. Technology is a two-edged sword because while it provides us freedoms that we never had access to, it can also be used as an information gathering tool that would make even the East German Stasi envious. The ongoing assault on our civil liberties has given rise to a demand for services protecting internet privacy such as ours. We strongly believe that the right to privacy enshrined in the Fourth Amendment (and others) of the U.S. Constitution is clear when it states that, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” It is our opinion that privacy will always be a fundamental human right and that the timeless words of Benjamin Franklin still hold true today. “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” Thus, we will always protect individuals against the tyrannical forces trying to infringe upon our right to privacy, and we will always stand on the side of respecting privacy.

Our goal with PIA is to bring back the Wild Wild West that we loved so much, because it creates a system in which people are able to learn what they wish to learn, say what they wish to say, experience what they wish to experience, and create what they wish to create.

Source: https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/7319/an-interview-with-private-internet-access-founder-andrew-lee/

Myself, journalists, and readers of this article, of course, will never be able to make perfect decisions and predict the future. However, what we as a society have evolved to be able to do is analyze mistakes in history and make sure to never repeat them again. When is the last time prohibition has worked out? Did it work on alcohol? Did it work on drugs? While this is not an essay on prohibition, it is a proven fact in history that prohibition leads to organized crime while not really helping to prohibit that which is prohibited in the least. It simply drives it underground and completely out of the control of the government. Just ask El Chapo! Tor will definitely earn itself a grand world tour.

Source: UK Considers Opt-in Freedom Of Speech - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

Also see: How one small American VPN company is trying to stand up for privacy | Ars Technica

 

[Millard]

Millard,I am very interested in this topic. For my self and for others on this this forum. Im not familiar with companys that offer these services. Nor do I trust them. Any help would be so appreciated.

Something to remember - you can't completely trust VPN providers. There is no independent way to verify that they do not maintain logs. TOR is the only practically guaranteed way to be anonymous. You can make your best choice concerning VPNs based on their public statements, their transparency, their stated philosophies, etc.

“You have to trust the VPN—they have access to your data,” Dan Auerbach of the EFF told Ars. “Even if they’re really good, the government can come in and say we have a warrant... You have to take it on faith that there will be no CALEA-type orders, [where] the government will come in and say you have to come in and do logging. This is the reason that Tor was developed, was that people realized that we want some sort of anonymity service that doesn't require you to trust just one party. That’s the basic problem with VPNs.”

Source: How one small American VPN company is trying to stand up for privacy | Ars Technica

 

[Cryptobolics]

I like how the fellow juice heads are becoming more educated about things like this. I'v been on a lot of boards and their has certainty been an evolution in the precaution taken when it comes to this game

 

[geauxtiger]

ty

 

[mands]

I'm having problems with my TOR browser. It will log me out of MESO sometimes when I switch to another thread or section. Is this common?

mands

 

[flenser]

I'm having problems with my TOR browser. It will log me out of MESO sometimes when I switch to another thread or section. Is this common?

mands

I'm pretty sure the Meso forum is logging you out, because your apparent IP address changed.

 

[Millard]

I'm pretty sure the Meso forum is logging you out, because your apparent IP address changed.

I think I found the solution. Dynamically-changing IP addresses generally don't matter with vbulletin authentication. I know this happens when you use TOR with something like safe-mail.net.

Vbulletin does allow administrators to block access to specified IP addresses; MESO had a few dozen such IP addresses in the blacklist. I suspect that most of those may have been TOR exit nodes that were used by spammers. As a result, members who were logged in would randomly and unpredictably be logged out once TOR switched to those blacklisted exist nodes.

I have removed these IP addresses from the blacklist and I think this has solved the problem.

I await confirmation from Mands and anyone else who was affected.

 

[Millard]

I'm pretty sure the Meso forum is logging you out, because your apparent IP address changed.

I think I found the solution. Dynamically-changing IP addresses generally don't matter with vbulletin authentication. I know this happens when you use TOR with something like safe-mail.net.

Vbulletin does allow administrators to block access to specified IP addresses; MESO had a few dozen such IP addresses in the blacklist. I suspect that most of those may have been TOR exit nodes that were used by spammers. As a result, members who were logged in would randomly and unpredictably be logged out once TOR switched to those blacklisted exit nodes.

I have removed these IP addresses from the blacklist and I think this has solved the problem.

I await confirmation from Mands and anyone else who was affected.

 

[mands]

I think I found the solution. Dynamically-changing IP addresses generally don't matter with vbulletin authentication. I know this happens when you use TOR with something like safe-mail.net.

Vbulletin does allow administrators to block access to specified IP addresses; MESO had a few dozen such IP addresses in the blacklist. I suspect that most of those may have been TOR exit nodes that were used by spammers. As a result, members who were logged in would randomly and unpredictably be logged out once TOR switched to those blacklisted exit nodes.

I have removed these IP addresses from the blacklist and I think this has solved the problem.

I await confirmation from Mands and anyone else who was affected.

I'm logged on now Millard. We shall see how it goes today.

mands

 

[mands]

Still having issues with MESO logging me out.

mands

 

[heavyiron]

TOR is super slow and terrible all the way around. I tried using it numerous times and the load times were insane. I wish there was something like TOR but better performance.

 

[ballerstatus]

No need for Tor, VPN is just fine.

Been using Witopia for years and great service. Also, they purge logs every few hours, so even subpoenaed, not much info they could offer to federal government. Additionally, you can choose to connect to about any city US wide and even plenty international. Service is about 70 per year.

NSA likely is more concerned with terrorist. Drug enforcement agencys more then likely to target sellers, not consumers, so most on this forum are fine.

Also, for those of you wanting free games, movies, ect. (torrenting); its nice your ISP cant see what you do and throttle your service and the NSA can't see what you do without significant effort.

"Can VPN protect me against NSA spying?

To a certain extent…

When you use a VPN service you create an encrypted tunnel between your computer and a server run by your VPN provider. Your ISP cannot ‘see’ what data is being transmitted (i.e. what you are doing), but can see that you are connected to your VPN server, when you are connected, how much data is transmitted, and usually also the fact that you are using encryption.

Anyone watching traffic on the internet can easily trace the IP of website visitors back to the VPN server. The VPN provider can then connect a user with the traced IP if it keeps logs of such activity.

So in the normal course of things, if you do not volunteer personal details to an internet website or service, and you are using a VPN service that keeps no logs, then VPN will do a good job of maintaining your anonymity.

Giving the game away yourself

One of the most shocking things about the scandal is not that the US government spies on its own citizens, but that pretty near all of the leading US tech companies, who in many ways form the backbone of the internet, are complicit. This means for example, that if you usually stay signed in to your Gmail account (and thus into Google), all your internet searches using the Google search engine are likely to be harvested by the NSA. Similarly, there is little point having a secure connection to the Skype servers, when these servers are wide open to NSA monitoring.

The simplest solution is to cancel your accounts with, and not use any of the affected services. In fact, given the reach of the NSA, we would suggest not using any US based internet service. However, for many this is not a realistic option, as most of us rely too heavily on these services for our day-to-day internet life.

Even if we are willing to go to the hassle finding alternative, more secure services (see below), these also generally rely on the person at the other end of the line having the will and tech savvy to cooperate. There is no point in having a secure, PGP encrypted email set-up if you’re Granny, who has a Gmail account, can’t even program the microwave! Similarly, for the tens of millions of users out there to whom Facebook is the internet, and whose friends are all on there and have no intention of leaving it, simply leaving Facebook is not an option."
https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/6484/the-nsa-prism-scandal-and-how-vpn-can-and-cannot-help/

 

[Millard]

No need for Tor, VPN is just fine.

Been using Witopia for years and great service. Also, they purge logs every few hours, so even subpoenaed, not much info they could offer to federal government. Additionally, you can choose to connect to about any city US wide and even plenty international. Service is about 70 per year.

Witopia is one of the fastest VPNs in my experience. I like it for purposes like a (legal) home media streaming network. But if I recall correctly, they keep logs for 30 days and they block torrent webs. I don't know if this has changed recently.

https://www.ivpn.net/blog/vpn-privacy-policies-decoded-witopia

As far as VPN vs TOR is concerned, it all boils down to: Do you trust your VPN? They remain the "weak link" in your anonymity quest.

 

[ballerstatus]

Witopia is one of the fastest VPNs in my experience. I like it for purposes like a (legal) home media streaming network. But if I recall correctly, they keep logs for 30 days and they block torrent webs. I don't know if this has changed recently.

"Do you keep logs of my activity? Can you monitor my web surfing?
We are not set up in any way to directly view an individual customer’s activity, nor do we monitor, capture, or store logs that are directly attributable to any individual customer. Some indirect data, and the other bits that are cached during the regular course of running an Internet business, are regularly destroyed, mostly during our weekly maintenance windows. In fact, we only keep this minimal and temporary “trailing log” of indirect data in case we learn a user is violating the terms of use, e.g. spamming, committing crimes using the service, etc. In that specific case, we will report this to our abuse team, determine the guilty party through a laborious matching process, terminate their service, and take further action, if necessary."


Also, told in email by staff "we don't keep much" by a tech support guy.

And no, I have never been throttled or block of any torrent sites. Been with service 3 years now.

 

[carpetpisser]

For a crash course on VPN's check-out lifehacker. Easy to read articles for non-techies, a ton of good advice and vendor-neutral. You can be up and running in about 10 minutes....