How to DISAPPEAR from the internet

Lynsey_ADMIN_

Could you give up the internet for Lent - or even for good?

Following various reports about companies stealing information and complaints about oversharing on social media, a web hosting firm has created a nine-step guide on how to disappear from the web completely.

It includes deactivating accounts, removing links from search results and how to remove yourself from various lists - and for people who'd rather just stay hidden than disappear, the guide also gives tips on how to use the internet anonymously.

'Social media has made everyone’s life an open book - one that’s open a bit too far in some cases.

‘For [people] concerned about their personal information potentially costing them jobs and relationships, the decision to ‘pull the plug’ is an increasingly attractive one,' said London-based WhoIsHostingThis (WIHT).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2575745/How-DISAPPEAR-internet-9-step-guide-helps-people-vanish-without-trace-surf-anonymously.html

THE NINE-STEP VANISHING ACT
1. Close your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts.

2. Search for yourself online and close any accounts you'd forgotten about.

3. Falsify information on accounts that can't be closed or deleted.

4. Unsubscribe from mailing lists.

5. Delete search engine results.

6. Contact websites directly and ask them to remove details about yourself.

7. Ask data clearing houses - companies that collect and sell data to other firms - to remove your records.

8. Ask to be unlisted in phone books and online directories.

9. Delete your email accounts.

Delta8

At the end of the rap news video which talked about the nsa spying, it talked about Tor. I searched it and its suppose to be a program that kinda Alternates your IP address or something too that effect. Anyone tried it?

https://www.torproject.org/

Matt

Yes, it's an anonymous browser - MrP actually introduced me to it. However, it's been cracked apparently. I'm not sure if they've fixed it until then.

In all honesty, I don't think there's any way to truly "disappear" from the Internet, aside from not using it altogether.

fiziwig

Here's a simple and foolproof anonymous browser: Buy a cheap laptop and use it only from public WiFi spots like libraries, motels, coffee shops, etc. Never connect this laptop to the internet through your own home Internet account. Keep absolutely no personal information on the laptop, and never access any of your personal email, forums, or accounts from that laptop. Do not register the laptop or submit the warranty for that laptop. That laptop is anonymous so anything you surf from that laptop is surfed anonymously.

You can even create a new email account with Yahoo or Gmail using a new identity not connected in any way with your real identity.

It's even better if you can buy the laptop second hand at a thrift store or a place that sells reconditioned used computers.

mrpops09_CMOD_

Here's a simple and foolproof anonymous browser: Buy a cheap laptop and use it only from public WiFi spots like libraries, motels, coffee shops, etc. Never connect this laptop to the internet through your own home Internet account. Keep absolutely no personal information on the laptop, and never access any of your personal email, forums, or accounts from that laptop. Do not register the laptop or submit the warranty for that laptop. That laptop is anonymous so anything you surf from that laptop is surfed anonymously.

You can even create a new email account with Yahoo or Gmail using a new identity not connected in any way with your real identity.

It's even better if you can buy the laptop second hand at a thrift store or a place that sells reconditioned used computers.

Wow...That is actually some of the best cyber-security/privacy advice I have ever read. Great comment 

Matt

Here's a simple and foolproof anonymous browser: Buy a cheap laptop and use it only from public WiFi spots like libraries, motels, coffee shops, etc. Never connect this laptop to the internet through your own home Internet account. Keep absolutely no personal information on the laptop, and never access any of your personal email, forums, or accounts from that laptop. Do not register the laptop or submit the warranty for that laptop. That laptop is anonymous so anything you surf from that laptop is surfed anonymously.

You can even create a new email account with Yahoo or Gmail using a new identity not connected in any way with your real identity.

It's even better if you can buy the laptop second hand at a thrift store or a place that sells reconditioned used computers.

I think at minimum one would have to acquire an older laptop for this as you've suggested, for newer machines and devices possess internal components like GPS instruments that can be tracked. One might also have to use open-source operating systems and software as well, since conventional operating systems have "back doors" (some by legal necessity) that facilitate tracking.

But even so, even if someone has gone through all these preparations, there is the simple act of looking up one's IP, which would likely be static at a place of business, and cross reference it with security tapes. Then they would simply feed any visual info they acquire into their infinite databases and the gig would be up.

One could use a VPN, Tor, etc, but Tor has already been hacked once, and is one sure that their proxy network isn't tracking them? And what if the authorities simply go after the proxy network for their logs?

I think as soon as someone uses the Internet, they're tossed into the ring. I also think most people don't understand the sheer magnitude of control the corporations / federal institutions have over the Internet already. Take for instance Firefox, part of the non-profit Mozilla foundation, which people turn to because it allows them to not use one of the corporate browsers that syphon their data.

Or not.

The Mozilla Foundation is funded by... you guessed it... Google. 300 million dollars a year. 

I really can't think of any way to disappear from the Internet, at least while remaining static. One would have to always be wearing a mask, avoiding cameras, removing the microphones and cameras from their machines, sweeping their machines for key loggers, and a zillion other things. And still, the NSA would probably be one step ahead of them.

Maybe the best way to hide is actually not to hide at all? What if everyone came forward and searched for / presented the truth, preventing the authorities from using fear and divide-and-conquer strategies?

mrpops09_CMOD_

@Matt, what you said is true, but it would take them a lot of work to find some random person that didn't want to be found....Unless you're a known threat, I don't think they would bother to find the identity of that "one pesky computer".....unless the stuff that one computer is used for is something that would warrant attention 

Rosie_MOD_

One only needs to hide if they have something to hide.

fiziwig

I think at minimum one would have to acquire an older laptop for this as you've suggested, for newer machines and devices possess internal components like GPS instruments that can be tracked. One might also have to use open-source operating systems and software as well, since conventional operating systems have "back doors" (some by legal necessity) that facilitate tracking.

But even so, even if someone has gone through all these preparations, there is the simple act of looking up one's IP, which would likely be static at a place of business, and cross reference it with security tapes. Then they would simply feed any visual info they acquire into their infinite databases and the gig would be up.

---

I really can't think of any way to disappear from the Internet, at least while remaining static. One would have to always be wearing a mask, avoiding cameras, removing the microphones and cameras from their machines, sweeping their machines for key loggers, and a zillion other things. And still, the NSA would probably be one step ahead of them.

1. A GPS can be tracked when the laptop is connected to the Internet. When you log off, turn off the computer, get out of range of the WiFi hotspot, etc. then GPS does nothing, because it has nowhere to send its data.

2. I have a plug-in GPS device on my laptop connected to my mapping program that I use when I'm traveling. It has an external antenna and it's much more sensitive than any built-in GPS chip. One thing I've discovered is that even this GPS does not work very well indoors. I doesn't work at all inside my house. It doesn't work inside most McDonalds restaurants I've tried it in from San Diego to Seattle, it doesn't work inside my public library. This top-of-the line GPS device is unable to lock a signal on the required minimum of three satellites unless it's outside, or in my car, but near the windshield.

3. "Back doors" have to do with breaking encryption. If your anonymous laptop has nothing encrypted on it then there is nothing for a back door to decrypt.

4. So I go to the public library one day and to the senior citizen center parking lot the next day, and the McDonalds across town the next day, and then four different places when I drive the 400 miles to visit my grandkids. So first of all why do "they" want to know who I am? Out of the millions of TCP/IP packets flinging through space from tens of thousands of public WiFi hotspots around the country, what is their reason for sniffing out the particular packets from a particular laptop at a particular roadside public WiFi hotspot, and why would they bother trying to connect that to other packets from the same laptop from different WiFi hotspots in distant locations? And with either Linux or an older Windows laptop, if I visited 10 different WiFi spots on ten different days it would look like 10 different laptops and ten different people. There would be nothing that would indicate that those ten different surfing sessions were the same person on the same laptop.

The point is, the low volume of traffic from a single laptop would be so completely swamped by the volume of traffic that goes through the system every microsecond, that connecting the dots would be impossible even if somebody wanted to bother.

It doesn't really work like it works on "NCIS" or "Person of Interest" on T.V.

5. Key loggers are for stealing passwords, or copying secret data typed into the computer. They don't need a key logger to know you are surfing a particular web site. Key loggers get them nothing they don't already have from packet sniffers or ISP logs. That is, as long as you don't ever type your passwords into the anonymous laptop. And the keylogger needs to tell the listener WHOSE keys it is logging, and it does that with IP Address, and if you connect via a different IP address every day, then there's nothing to connect today's key logging to tomorrow's key logging. Again, dots with no way to draw the lines connecting them.

And how would a keylogger get on your laptop unless you downloaded malicious software?

And again, I have to ask why "they" would bother to send agents all over the country to collect grainy VHS security tapes and try to cross check them with what? ISP records? Why? (No, they can't pull up the security videos from the Grapevine Ca. McDonalds in an NSA office in D.C. They would have to send an FBI agent 80 miles up I5 from Los Angeles to physically pick up the tape and drive it back 80 miles to L.A. only to discover that the old VHS cassette had been re-recorded so many times and had so many dropouts that all you could tell is that there were 4 people sitting at four different tables with Big Macs and laptops. Of course the tape didn't show the people who were eating their Big Macs in their cars or campers with their laptops open and connected.)

As for mics and cameras, I have never owned a laptop that I didn't immediately put a piece of masking tape over the camera lens and a drop of epoxy in the microphone hole, just because all it takes is for somebody to know my IP address to listen to my microphone or look through my camera. I know this for a fact because I have written software that connects any two computers as long as I know the IP address of the computer I want to snoop on. My son and I wrote some spy programs like that just for fun more than 15 years ago. (I'm a retired software engineer.) When I want to Skype I plug in a USB mic and peal the tape off my camera. Easy peasy.

And bear in mind the enormous cost of tracking a single anonymous laptop that moves from location to location at random. I live in a small city and unlike the big city, my town is not blanketed by surveillance cameras. Finding me and my anonymous laptop would be virtually impossible, so "they" would have to have a very good reason to justify the expense of hunting me down. And since I have nothing to hide anyway, "they" don't really care about me, and would never have a reason to come looking for me. And that's all assuming that "they" knew that ten different surfing sessions on ten different days were really all the same person, which they would have no way of knowing.

But if, for example, you wanted to surf legal, but embarrassing web sites, for example, a married man surfing dating sites, or porn sites, then having an anonymous laptop would be a way to do it and never get caught by your spouse.

But in the final analysis, I'm not worried about being invisible on the
Internet because I really don't care who sees who I am, where I am, or
what I'm doing. I don't really have anything to hide. The only exception
is my banking information and credit card numbers. I keep those private
by keeping them off my computer. I make my online purchases using a
pre-paid American Express debit card. If somebody hacks the number they
can only steal whatever I have loaded into the card, and its never more
than what I load onto it to make a specific online purchase. And if
that card number gets hacked I just don't load it anymore, and get a
replacement card.

Finally, the Internet is a passing fad anyway. When the grid crashes the Internet goes down with it. I'm seriously considering just weaning myself off the Internet before it crashes and spending more time in my garden and reading good books.

Rosie_MOD_

That's so important - having books, music and hobbies that don't rely on technology to "switch them on". On the other hand people who don't have books in their home or play music, chess etc. are going to be in for one tough time as they'll be bored to tears.

mrpops09_CMOD_

@fiziwig  Thanks for all that information. I didn't know the half of it. It's pretty cool to have an "IT" expert here as most of us MODS only know enough to get by lol