2-privacy.com

You could try reading about wingates, socks and proxies (oh before i forget, turn off java, javascript, cookies, what’s related, and smart update … if you are using IE you’re not very smart). Also try installing a firewall, or DHCP or you can learn from me!

There are situations in which you may want to visit a site without leaving a trace of the visit. For instance you want to check what’s going on at your competitor’s site. Your visit will generate a record in the log file. Frequent visits will generate many records. Do you want to know what kind of records? See in YOUR REQUEST, YOUR WHOIS RECORD and GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION, Privacy Analysis of your Internet Connection, Another Privacy Investigation Report, BrowserSpy Info, ShowMyIP - will tell you some scary info about what can be told about your computer via the internet.

Note that these tests are not very sophisticated. A dedicated “snooper” can often learn much more. Once I came across a server that tried to connect to my computer’s disk while I was browsing … that was an exciting experince. You should also remember about things like cookies, hostile applets and java scripts, browser security holes and so on. So why don’t we send someone instead of ourselves? Good idea.

Remember that simple owner of Web server may collect information about requests you had performed in search engines, keywords you had typed, your browser and language, date, time, your operating system, physical and geographical position, pages from which you had clicked links and so on. See below some records generated by our server users (real IPs are slightly changed).. Note that large internet companies such as doubleclick, google, government institutions have tremendous possibilities to collect much more information about you and your behaviour.

24.10.31.1 - - [17/Oct/2006:07:03:22 +0000] “GET /proxy/howto.htm HTTP/1.1″ 200 33104
“http://www.google.com/search?complete=1&hl=en&q=change+ip+address+proxy&btnG=Google+Search”
“Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7″
217.154.66.1 - - [17/Oct/2006:07:03:25 +0000] “GET /proxy/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 37361
“http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=http+proxy+for+ftp&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8”
“Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6″

Step #1-Determine your IP address:

Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique identifier called an IP address. On many networks, the IP address of a computer is always the same. On other networks, a random IP address is assigned each time a computer connects to the network. This is what we are referring to when we ask if you have a static or a dynamic IP address. If a system uses dynamic addressing, the IP can change quite often. Look into THIS LINK to determing your current IP address.

Step #2-Get Anonymous:

Method #1: Anonymizer

One can surf anonymously and easy with the help of a nice services called CGI/Web proxies. Simply type a URL you want to visit — the Page does the job for you, selecting random CGI/Web proxy from a hundreds of available services, securing you from many potential dangers. When you follow a link on a page viewed via CGI proxy you get there via the this proxy again, so you don’t have to type a new URL.

CGI/Web proxy has two more nice features. Firstly, there are WWW sites that are inaccessible from one place, but easily accessible from another. Once I was trying to load a page located in Australia for 20 minutes, all in vain. Using CGI/Web proxies immediately solved the problem. Secondly, there are certain sites that give you information depending on where you are “calling” from. Let’s take an example. I was at Encyclopedia Britannica site, trying to check the price for their products. Clicking on Order Information button gave me the list of Britannica’s dealers all over the world, no price info. Going to the same place via the Anonymizer led me to a different page, where I found the price list. As it turned out the local dealer’s price for Encyclopedia Britannica CD’97 was several times higher than the one at which it’s sold in USA. Good savings!

Some CGI/Web proxies are able to encrypt URLs (uniform resource locator) in a way that these can be used as reference for a server. If a request with an encrypted URL occurs, they are able to decrypt the URL and forward it to the server, without enabling the user to get knowledge about the server address. All references in the servers response are again encrypted before the response is forwarded to the client.

Some CGI/Web proxies are able to use secure HTTPS protocol for exchanging data between proxy and your computer, even if original server is not secure. This option excluding possiblility to sniff a data flow between your computer and this proxy is very useful in some cases, for example, when you are forced to work in possibly scanned/sniffed insecure public network.

Method #2: Proxy Servers

What is proxy?

• Proxy - a server setup designed to offer either firewall security or faster access to cached content normally accessible only through slower connections.
• Proxy server - is the software installed on some network server. The main purpose of this software is to relay traffic between two network hosts (client and server), sometimes this software does some data caching (usually this is performed by HTTP proxies). If your browser is configured to work through the proxy server then all your network traffic will go through that proxy server.

The main purposes of proxy servers:

• Transfer speed improvement (in case of caching proxies). You may use your ISP’s proxy to access the internet - usually you have better connection to your ISP’s proxy than to other hosts, if this proxy has the resource you requested from the internet you will get a copy of it from proxy (from its cache).
• Security and privacy (for HTTP). Anonymous proxies hide information about your computer in the request headers, so you can safely surf the net and your information will never be used in any way.
• LAN interconnection (or LAN to WAN connection). Sometimes you experience some problems while accessing the server located in the other network (for example in the internet).

There are 3 types of HTTP proxies:

• Fully anonymous (elite or high anonymous) proxies. Such proxies do not change request fields and look like real browser. You real IP is also hidden of course. People that administrating internet servers will think that you are not using any proxies.
• Anonymous proxies also do not show your real IP but change the request fields, so it is very easy to detect that proxy while log analyzing. Nothing really matters, but some server administrators restrict the proxy requests.
• Transparent proxies (not anonymous, simply HTTP) change the request fields, also they transfer real IP. Such proxies are not applicable for security and privacy while surfing on net. You can use them only for network speed improvement.

When Web Proxy Servers are Useful?

• Permitting and restricting client access to the Internet based on the client IP address.
• Caching documents for internal documents. - Selectively controlling access to the Internet and subnets based on the submitted URL.
• Providing Internet access for companies using private networks.
• Converting data to HTML format so it is readable by a browser.

One can also anonymize one’s web surfing by using a proxy server. Proxy servers are similar to the Anonymizer, i.e. web pages are retrieved by the proxy server rather than by the person actually browsing the Web (you). But there are several important distinctions: proxy servers don’t help with cookies, hostile applets or code. In most of the cases they do just one thing: they conceal your real geograhic location.

Most of proxy servers restrict access based on the IP address from which a user connects to them. In other words if you have an account with Bluh-Bluh-Com, you can’t use La-Di-Da-Net’s proxy server, access will be denied. Fortunately you can always find a “kind-hearted” proxy server on the Net the owners of which openly state that the service is publicly available, or a proxy server that doesn’t restrict access that due to whatever reason, but the fact is not known to everyone.

For those who are not so lazy: find your own proxy server, it’s real easy. Go to your favorite search engine (Google.com for example) and type something like open public +proxy server list +port 8080, and you’ll get the list of Web pages where ISPs give complete instructions to their users of how they should configure their browsers. Try every proxy address and after 5 or 7 failures you will surely find a proxy server that works for you. So let’s say you have found a proxy, e.g.: some.proxy.com, HTTP port 8080. To make your browser use a proxy server fill out the corresponding fields in Manual Proxy Configuration tab (hope you can find it yourself).

Warnings!

Misconfigured Servers

Often, a PUBLIC proxy server is open because it has not been configured properly. Most of open proxy servers are not supposed to be public. The person that configured the server was not aware of the potential problems and security risks. It is very common to for a novice administrator to set up a proxy with access rights that allow anyone to connect. To close a proxy server it is necessary to force users to connect from one IP address or a range of IP addresses. An alternative is to require users to use a user name and password.

‘Honey Pots’ or ‘Honey Proxies’

Everything that is done on or through the open proxy server can be logged and traced. A honey pot is an open proxy server intentionally deployed by security professionals to lure hackers and track their every move. A honey pot can also be installed by a hacker. A hacker can put a proxy server up on his, or a victim’s computer and wait for a scanner to find it. Sending spam e-mail trough a honey pot proxy exposes the sender’s activity. When a spammer uses the proxy to send bulk email, it is possible to collect the content of the spam and report the spammer to his ISP.

Security Risks

When you use an open proxy server, your computer is making a direct connection to another computer. You do not know who is in control of the remote computer. If you are using proxy servers from open proxy lists, you could be trusting your email messages, passwords or other sensitive information to a person running the server. Someone can be watching the unencrypted information you are transferring over the network.

Configuring your browser manually

FireFox

Tools - Options - General - Connection Settings - Manual proxy configuration - View, and for HTTP and FTP type name of your proxy server (example: proxy.net) and port number (example 3128).

Mozilla, Nestcape Navigator 6.x, Nestcape Navigator 4.x, Netscape Communicator

Edit - Preferences - Category - Advanced - Proxies - Manual proxy configuration - View - Set proxy for following protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc.

Konqueror

Setting - Configure Konqueror… - Proxies - Enable “Use proxy” - Set proxies for HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or other protocols.

Internet Explorer 5.x, Internet Explorer 6.x

Service - Internet Options - Connections - Choose your connection and click “Settings” button for dial-up connection or click “LAN Settings” button in the “Local Area Network (LAN) Settings” group box - Enable “use a proxy server - type proxy name and proxy port - If nessesary, enable/disable “bypass proxy server for local addresses” - OK

Internet Explorer 4.x, Internet Explorer 3.x

View - Internet Options - Connection - mark “Access the Internet using a proxy server”. At ADDRESS type name of the server (example: proxy.net) and at PORT type port number (example: 3128), click on advanced button and mark “Use the same proxy server for all protocols”.Once you have carried out this simple operation, you can start surfing the Web leaving traces as if you are from Bulgaria, USA, North Korea (that would be fun!) or somewhere else, but …there is one more very important privacy concern, “Is My Proxy Anonymous?”.

Is My Proxy Anonymous?

Not all proxy servers are truly anonymous. Some of them let the system administrator of the site that you visit via a proxy server find out the IP address from which the proxy server is accessed, i.e. your real IP address. You can perform an anonymity check test: DETECT PROXY

Final Considerations

In spite of all of the the above said … use proxies only when it’s necessary. Working via proxy servers slows down data transfer rate and is an additional load on the network and the servers. Another important thing that is often forgotten by many people: use proxies for legal purposes. Hiding you identity is ok (at least in the free world) as long as you want to visit a site that offers, say, pornography. But if you use a proxy server for purchasing CDs or software with a bogus credit card number there is a good chance that you’ll end up in prison, let alone the moral aspects. Remeber, all the connections are logged, and if you violate the law you can be tracked down. The site administrator can check the logs and contact the proxy’s administrator, he can in turn check his own logs and find your real IP address, then they both will contact your ISP, and your ISP keeps logs too … Anyway, I hope you got it.

Specially for paranoiacs

Look, different tools described above can be chained! For example you set up your browser to use Proxy A, and you know the addresses and port numbers of 2 more servers Proxy B and Proxy C. The URL that you type should look something like that: http://proxyB:port/http://proxyC:port/http://www.whereyougo.com/ As the result you go to the site via 3 servers: A,B and C. One of them can be the Anonymizer. WARNING: Not all the proxy servers allow chains like that. I won’t answer your messages asking me why it doesn’t work in your particular case!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 5:34 am and is filed under Web privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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