Free Republic

Cookies. Fingerprinting. Tracking. Surveillance. Spyware. Geostalking. It's a rough neighborhood out there for denizens of the web. Whether you want to anonymously provide whistle-blowing details on a corrupt business operation or you just want to check today's weather, simply logging on is fraught with threats to your privacy. This week, two major players in the field of online privacy joined forces to release a super-private browser that they say will "make life harder for those who collect data from you." Mullvad VPN, a highly respected service based in Sweden, where providers are legally protected from being forced to collect traffic-related...

My TOR browser updated to 12.0. After that, it wouldn't connect to the internet. I push "Connect" and it says "Connecting..." but minutes pass and nothing.I tried changing my VPN's point of origin. I tried rebooting. But it doesn't help.I'm running Windows 7 64 bit Pro.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A Florida man is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State extremist group, including attempting to buy multiple weapons and scouting potential targets for an attack in the Tampa Bay area, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. A criminal complaint charges Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charge carries a potential 20-year prison term. **SNIP** According to the affidavit, Al-Azhari scouted a number of targets in the Tampa Bay region, including beaches, parks and even the Tampa FBI field...

The dark web, a section of the internet that can only be accessed via a Tor browser, is designed to protect users' tracks online and obscure digital footprints.Jeroen Jumelet / EPA-EFE WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have filed multiple charges against a 23-year-old South Korean man accused of running what they call the world's "largest dark web child porn marketplace." The now-shuttered English-language site, called "Welcome to Video," contained more than 200,000 unique videos or almost 8 terabytes of data showing sex acts involving children, toddlers and infants, according to the 18-page criminal indictment unsealed here Wednesday, and processed 7,300...

There is a privacy threat lurking on perhaps hundreds of millions of devices, that could enable potential attackers to track and profile users, by using information leaked via the Tor network, even if the users never intentionally installed Tor in the first place. In a session at the SecTor security conference in Toronto, Canada on October 10, researchers Adam Podgorski and Milind Bhargava from Deloitte Canada outlined and demonstrated previously undisclosed research into how they were able to determine that personally identifiable information (PII) is being leaked by millions of mobile users every day over Tor. The irony of the...

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you." I don't know, or care, who said that originally, but in this age of hacking and cyber corruption – and the deep state trying desperately to defeat the forces of light - it's becoming increasingly clear that there appears to be folks out in cyberspace who don't have your best interests in mind. Indeed, you may have heard about how Facebook and Google have been revealed as corrupt data miners more interested in raking in cash and helping their fellow political travellers than in providing the benign...

I ask, because I recently noticed the DuckDuckGo mobile privacy browser integrates support for TOR/Orbot. (Under "Settings" is the option to enable TOR.) Relevant URLs: Orbot: https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ DuckDuckGo browser at F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.duckduckgo.mobile.android/

Congressional investigations into the Trump dossier have so far been focused on the FBI and Justice Department. They still are, but now investigators are also looking into a possible Obama State Department role in the collection and dissemination of sensational and still-unverified allegations against candidate Donald Trump gathered by a former British spy working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In addition to having contacts in the Obama Justice Department and FBI, that former spy, Christopher Steele, was also well-connected with the Obama State Department. A book published in November by a correspondent at the Guardian, "Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money,...

State-owned Russian-language news channel "Russia 24" published an interesting video showing at-sea test of a Russian Army Tor-M2KM air defense missile system from the Project 11356 frigate Admiral Grigorovich. The 9K331MKM module can be seen fitted on the helicopter pad of the frigate. Video: Russian Navy Tests Tor-M2KM air defense missile system from Admiral Grigorovich FrigateLaunch of a 9M331M surface to air missile from the self-contained combat module 9K331MKM short-range missile system Tor-M2KM, placed on the helicopter deck of the head frigate Admiral Grigorovich of Project 11356. Screenshot from "Russia 24" video (via bmpd.livejournal.com). The tests were conducted in the...

A small library in New Hampshire sits at the forefront of global efforts to promote privacy and fight government surveillance — to the consternation of law enforcement. The Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, a city of 13,000, last year became the nation's first library to use Tor, software that masks the location and identity of internet users, in a pilot project initiated by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Library Freedom Project. Users the world over can — and do — have their searches randomly routed through the library. Computers that have Tor loaded on them bounce internet searches through a random pathway,...

A newly discovered malware capable of cyber espionage and remote takeover is targeting Apple Mac computers, delivering its payload by opening up a backdoor connection to a command-and-control web server via the encrypted Tor network. Named Eleanor (or Backdoor.MAC.Eleanor), the malware arrives disguised as a drag-and-drop file conversion application called the EasyDoc Converter. The application is found on many credible third-party sites, according to an analysis from Bitdefender, whose security researchers uncovered the malware. The program is neither verified nor digitally signed by Apple. In reality, the program's true purpose is far more malevolent, granting attackers a backdoor connection that...

The campaign against Rule 41 – which will give cops and Feds in America the power to hack people's computers around the world – has kicked up a gear. Leaders of the US House of Representatives and Senate got a letter today urging them to block the rule change before it becomes permanent in December. The proposed legislative tweak, quietly passed by an obscure committee and approved by the Supreme Court in April, would allow a US magistrate judge to grant law enforcement access to any stored data on a computer, phone, or any storage device around the world that...

The Tor Project, the foundation of the crime-infiltrated "dark Web," is trying to soften its public image — but without backing away from the anonymous Web-surfing technology that has made it so controversial with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. For about a decade, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit has provided free software that lets activists and political dissidents visit websites and exchange messages outside the scrutiny of oppressive governments. But the same software HAS ALLOWED HIDDEN MARKETS FOR CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, GUNS, ILLEGAL DRUGS AND STOLEN CREDIT CARD INFORMATION TO FLOURISH, while heightening U.S. intelligence agencies' worries about technology providing an unbreakable wall...

When Ugandans went to the polls last Thursday in presidential and parliamentary elections, they participated in the most heavily-contested political battle since multiparty democracy began in 2005. But they also discovered that their access to social media and mobile payment services had been cut off, part of a three-day ban by the government that limited political discussion and temporarily halted financial transactions across the country. When the dust had cleared, incumbent, 30-year president Gen. Y.K. Museveni had been re-elected for another five-year term along with his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, the leader of the largest opposition party was under...

The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a search warrant. It's called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without providing any specific...

If you want a truly anonymous life, then maybe it's time you learned about Tor, CSpace and ZRTP. These three technologies could help people hide their activities from the National Security Agency, according to NSA documents newly obtained from the archive of former contractor Edward Snowden by the German magazine Der Spiegel. The combination of Tor, CSpace and ZRTP (plus another anonymizing technology for good measure) results in levels of protection that the NSA deems "catastrophic" -- meaning the organization has "near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications," according to Der Spiegel. "Although the documents are around two years old,...

For over a decade, people all over the world have used Tor (formerly known as the Onion Router) to protect their privacy. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory developed the system using open source technology, to protect U.S. government communications. It is used by people living under restrictive regimes who want to access forbidden information or data on the Internet, whistle-blowers and dissidents who want to communicate with journalists, and anyone who wants to use the Internet without being tracked or to publish information on the Net without compromising their privacy.How Tor Works Tor works by sending traffic from its source...

James Cook November 6, 2014 The FBI and Europol have conducted a joint operation to take down the internet's thriving "deep web" drug marketplaces. The official FBI New York Twitter account just confirmed the seizure of Silk Road 2.0, saying that the site's alleged operator, Blake Benthall, was arrested in San Francisco on Wednesday. He now potentially faces life in prison, the FBI says. Benthall appears to be an employee of SpaceX, Elon Musk's private rocket company. (snip)

A security researcher has identified a Tor exit node that was actively patching binaries users download, adding malware to the files dynamically. The discovery, experts say, highlights the danger of trusting files downloaded from unknown sources and the potential for attackers to abuse the trust users have in Tor and similar services. Josh Pitts of Leviathan Security Group ran across the misbehaving Tor exit node while performing some research on download servers that might be patching binaries during download through a man-in-the middle attack. Downloading any kind of file from the Internet is a dodgy proposition these days, and many...

Last week, German journalists revealed that the National Security Agency has a program to collect information about people who use privacy-protecting services, including popular anonymizing software called Tor. But it’s not clear how many users have been affected. So we did a little sleuthing, and found that the NSA’s targeting list corresponds with the list of directory servers used by Tor between December 2010 and February 2012 – including two servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tor users connect to the directory servers when they first launch the Tor service.That means that if you downloaded Tor during 2011, the NSA may have scooped up your...