Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: AltoStasis on July 25, 2013, 06:45 am
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Sup Silk Roaders!
So my question is, I currently only have a desktop pc (no notebook), and am wondering if it is realitively safe to place SR orders from my home computer. Using PgP for address. Using Tor also, obviously. Is it possible for my ISP/LE to track my browsing activity/purchases using Windows 7? Is using a Tails OS USB bootable drive from home a viable option? Or is it necessary to find a notebook and order from a public wifi spot without cameras?
I plan on ordering bitcoins directly (cash in mail) from SR vendors, so there will be no clearnet browsing.
Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks yall, happy roading!
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If you plan to order larger than personal amounts, which could get you a controlled delivery, then you don't want evidence on your computer of your SR activities. At a minimum you should put Tor Browser Bundle and your PGP program on a Truecrypt encrypted thumb drive. GPG4USB is a great portable PGP program that you can run from a thumb drive (or anywhere, really). Check the link in my signature for a tutorial on how to use it.
Your ISP doesn't know what you're browsing over Tor, but they can tell that you are using Tor. This isn't a problem generally, because millions of people use Tor for many reasons, so simply using Tor isn't evidence of a specific crime. However, if you want to hide your Tor use from your ISP anyway, you can use bridges. Look through the Security forum to find out how to do that. You can also use a VPN in combination with Tor, or even a VPN + bridges.
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I plan on ordering bitcoins directly (cash in mail) from SR vendors, so there will be no clearnet browsing.
Be extremely careful about ordering bitcoins from SR vendors. There are a lot of scammers.
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I should also point out that Tor Browser doesn't cache your browsing activity, but if you save bookmarks or maintain a text file with passwords, then you should definitely put that stuff on an encrypted thumb drive, or switch to using Tails with a persistent volume.
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Hey thanks for the replies astor!
I was aware of some of the information, and some of it I was not. I will definitely be doing research on bridges and VPN.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer my noob question which I'm sure you've seen 100 times before!
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run everything from a usb drive, tor, pgpg4usb, etc.
use a pgp password that you can memorize and don't write it down anywhere.