If VPN is not make your internet anonymous how simply do?

[sebastian]

I've read many posts here where VPNs are constantly mentioned, and it's said that using a VPN is not secure at all for remaining anonymous on the internet.

Alternatives exist, but it seems to me that you have to be an ultra computer nerd who sits in a cave 24/7 doing nothing but coding your internet connections in a perpetual state of paranoia to stay anonymous.

Is there really no simple way to do it, one that is easy to explain?

 

[daniels27]

I guess no matter how hard you try, I would definitely recommend to do the "illegal" surfing not simultaneously and with the same browser as the "legal" part where you identity is known. At least some sort of segregation is definitely needed. But that also applies to phones etc. If you constantly carry your own phone and your burner phone, it is pretty simple to link those to just one person.

Better use two computers with two different VPN for your own safety. Maybe even three or four, depending on the nature of the business.

 

[Sols]

Security isn't binary. It's a spectrum.

A VPN is anonymous enough to most people who don't want their ISP to see what they're doing and/or be a little harder to track for websites (to be used alongside privacy enhancements in your browser).

Take it one step further and pay for the VPN using crypto. Now you're hard to track even if someone goes after the VPN provider.

Then buy the crypto anonymously (P2P, tumbled/flipped) and use the anonymously obtained crypto to pay for the anonymous VPN and you're even harder to find.

And so on, and so on...

 

[sebastian]

Take it one step further and pay for the VPN using crypto. Now you're hard to track even if someone goes after the VPN provider.

according to another thread, the VPN provider will have your local IP in the logs, so there my privacy gone?

 

[Sols]

according to another thread, the VPN provider will have your local IP in the logs, so there my privacy gone?

Some do. Some don't. Some say they don't but still do. Some probably say they do but either don't or keep the logs for such a short period of time or in such a poor state it's hard to make anything useful with them.

Even if the VPN provider logs, is the party you are hiding from able to compel the VPN provider (a foreign company) to disclose the logs? Does the party even know what to do with the logs?

Some VPNs support multi-hop which makes it harder to trace the origin by connecting to VPN server via another VPN server.

You can keep going seemingly forever. There is always another threat lurking somewhere... It's easy to understand why so many security experts turn into paranoid tinfoil hat wearing anti-socials.

 

[mraleph]

I've read many posts here where VPNs are constantly mentioned, and it's said that using a VPN is not secure at all for remaining anonymous on the internet.

Alternatives exist, but it seems to me that you have to be an ultra computer nerd who sits in a cave 24/7 doing nothing but coding your internet connections in a perpetual state of paranoia to stay anonymous.

Is there really no simple way to do it, one that is easy to explain?

First of all, VPN design goal was not to provide anonymity and privacy but to enable communication for scattered resources in virtual LAN through single gateway - remote offices, printers, projectors etc. Confidentiality thru encryption was not a part of that design.

For VPN to operate, it needs to know your source and destination URI.

Today's commercial VPN services are functioning as overlay network that masquerades your source address with its gateways's so that your destination is deceived.

To define logging we need to agree what data are being stored. Recording and storing traffic requires storage resources. It's highly not likely that VPN providers are performing that kind of universal and non discriminatory storing. Focused ones, perhaps, particularly when requested by public authorities. But, storing source and destination address with associated data, whether they state a no logs policy or not, they simply, by a nature of the system, have the access to those data.

Networking is all about hops. In order to locate you an adversary needs to execute traceroute. Hops are there to protect your location.

There comes a TOR and I2P as mixer networks with several hops.

I already wrote about that

Post in thread 'Is TOR Still Anonymous? and How Were People Caught Using TOR?'
Is TOR Still Anonymous? and How Were People Caught Using TOR?

No, it's not complicated to achieve network privacy, anonymity and security across full spectrum. But, yes, there are no readily available solutions for OP's idea whatever the marketing. We may offer a solution - both hardware and software - to that in time to come.

 

[Simon4466]

There's no one size fits all for privacy. There are bad companies, good companies, bad/good tools, and in most cases it is user error anyways that rats them out. I could tell you about Mullvad or tools like Whonix and Tails but then some other schizos will simply disagree and call me a fed, so just do your own research.

 

[sebastian]

Tails but then some other schizos

I don't think there is a very comprehensive document about it in the mg gold
https://www.offshorecorptalk.com/th...-everything-you-do-–-introducing-tails.31842/