September 10, 2014
Over past year, I've learned a lot about anonymity on the internet so I thought I'd share.
Install a VPN. I've found privateinternetaccess.com to be the best. Its $40/yr and it doesn't seem to hinder my internet speed. What this does is route all of your internet traffic through one of their servers so the outside world doesn't see your IP address.
Get a hushmail email address. You have to pay for privacy. If you want, you can still use Gmail or whatever service, but encrypt your emails yourself using PGP. The most simple solution is Portable PGP. Its simple and you have to handle your own keys and copy paste into emails, but you know what you're getting. I mostly just use GPGTools for Mac Mail. It gives you some nice buttons in Mail for doing all this stuff and encrypts / decrypts everything for you. Last but not least, Google's end-to-end is brand new and not fully supported but its something to keep an eye on.
Bitcoins! I use MultiBit as my bitcoin wallet. Its simple and lightweight. If you buy bitcoins via Coinbase or any of the US Government regulated exchanges, make sure to anonymize them!
If you want to host a website while remaining anonymous, I like using Bithost and paying with bitcoins. Using namecheap, you can also buy a domain name with bitcoins.
The Tor network is a project started by the US Navy for internet anonymity. This is where you hear about people buying drugs, guns, fake ids, and human trafficking, mostly transacting through bitcoins. Its also how government dissidents avoid getting in trouble from oppresive governments and how whistleblowers protect their anonymity. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supports the Vidalia Tor browser which is built off of Firefox. I'd recommend using this.
Just because I thought this was so cool, its now easier than ever to implement your own WikiLeaks-like whistleblower platform through the Tor network. All you need is an available computer with Ubuntu Linux and GlobaLeaks installed. A cheap netbook will work just fine and its really easy to install.
For just normal web browsing, I'd also recommend installing the Disconnect Me browser extension which prevents 3rd party websites from tracking you across the web.