Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: blood_oranges on May 01, 2012, 03:00 am
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Can my ISP detect that my account runs Tor sometimes when going online? That is all I want to know.
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Yes, your ISP can see everything you do. As well as the NSA, they have been spying on the world in the past 10 years to a level never before seen. If CISPA passes, it just makes what they've already been doing legal. If you want some true anonymity, buy a laptop on craigslist, in cash, never use this computer on YOUR network, don't even boot it up, and use this Tor laptop at free wifi hotspots.
There is definitely some truth to that. There are some other pro active steps you can take. Heck IT Security is a whole career and study in and of itself. I don't know about buying a laptop on Craigslist and how that would chage much. You can also create a whole computer in a virtual machine. Basically creating a computer out of thin air that can't be tracked back to anything. When you reinstall a clean OS on a computer the only thing they can match back is the MAC address. Lots of ways around using a computer anonymously. But using a public hotspot could be of great assistance in that task!
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Can my ISP detect that my account runs Tor sometimes when going online? That is all I want to know.
Yes, they can but it won't do them much good. Your traffic is encrypted so there's no way of knowing what sites you've visited.
V.
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Yep you're right about that. I'm just talking about tracking the computer back to the physical owner from purchase that you were hinting at about paying cash for one off of craigslist. That's all, but yep for sure. They can listen to anything. They just don't have the ability to read encrypted info like PGP. And I do agree a public hotspot is a great idea! :) Cheers mate!
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Thank you for the replies. Also,a computer created out of thin air sounds super neat.
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There seems to be a lot of paranoia associated with running Tor - personally I run Tor browser both from my home and office address every day from an encrypted USB stick.
An analysis of the traffic might well show that I encrypted my traffic and forwarded it to another Tor relay but what good would it do? You can't even tell the Onion sites someone has visited e.g this forum, let alone retrieve any data about someone's user name / password.
Of course if you are receiving contraband like drugs at your home address you may decide you don't want to attract any unwanted Police attention but Tor is specifically designed not to be vulnerable to this kind of monitoring - your only worry is if the machine itself is seized which is why it's vital you encrypt it using a program like Truecrypt.
V.