Search Results for: raising the shields

In the previous post in my series on how to protect your privacy online I've looked at the TOR software which hides your location from prying eyes and encrypts all data right until the TOR exit node. I was delighted how easy it has become in recent years to install and use the package so … Continue reading Raising the Shields – Part 6: The Onion Router (TOR) on Android

Using the Internet privately and anonymously with an off the shelf web browser is next to impossible. The combination of IP address, cookies, what the browser willingly tells web servers about you, add-ons such as Flash communicating with a remote server outside of the browser context, etc. etc., leaves little privacy and anonymity. There's a … Continue reading Raising the Shields – Part 5: The Onion Router (TOR)

On my way to putting some more privacy through encryption and self hosting between me and the rest of the world the next step was looking at email as that is certainly one of the main means of communication for me. As I already use Thunderbird as my email client instead of a web mailer … Continue reading Raising the Shields – Part 4: Encrypting E-Mails and How Search and My Smartphone Stand In the Way

It's quite obvious that privacy and anonymity doesn't come built into most computing and online products today. I hope my 'Raising the Shields' posts are giving you some ideas and background information what is possible and what you might want to use yourself both while mobile and at home. While doing some research I came … Continue reading Raising the Shields – Part 3: PRISM Break

In the majority of cases, https provides privacy and security by encrypting and decrypting data traffic to and from a web server. The mechanism is based on web server SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates and public/private keys that are exchanged during connection establishment. Data sent to the other end is always encrypted using the public … Continue reading Raising the Shields – Part 2: Certificate Patrol

I use instant messaging between family members and friends quite a lot as it's a fast and efficient communication tool. But communication is easily intercepted as everything is transferred over a centralized server. That's not good as I like my conversations to be private. In a recent Security Now podcast, Steve Gibson has made me … Continue reading Raising the Shields – Part 1: Off-The-Record (OTR) Instant Messaging

In the past couple of weeks a number of revelations have shown the extent of secret service organizations from around the world tapping the Internet to spy on their citizens and those of other nations, store data about them, record their use of the network and communication metadata such as phone call records. While I … Continue reading Prism & Co.: Raising the Shields Is Not Enough