Let’s round-up some of the privacy tools available, and the various ways you can put them to use. Privacy is goign to become more and more crucial as time goes on and encryption technology is the basis for most emerging technologies. You should get familiar with this stuff now.
Depending on how private you want to be you will need varying amounts of technical ability. This is not an exhaustive list, bit here ya go.
Encryption:
- BestCrypt – a seriously cool encryption system. While not useful for email BestCrypt allows you to make virtual encrypted file systems. You can, for instance, allocate 500MB on your HD to be encrypted and give it a drive letter. I use it on occasion..
- PGP Corporation – the standard for encryption in email. Widely used and pretty compatible. The retail versions have a wide range of features and tools though a limited freeware version is available. To be honest with you the freeware version looks really good. Despite the web page it looks like Outlook integration and disk encryption is included. So far it is doing well for me. if you have to pick one tool, pick this one for now.
- The GNU Privacy Guard – this is a Open Source offshoot of PGP. it is compatible with PGP under many circumstances. While possibly more trustworthy there are more obstacles to it’s use by non technical people. Currently this is what I use.
- WinPT Windows Privacy Tools – this is the tool that makes [[GnuPG]] (above) workable for most folks under Windows. It allows easy management of keyrings, easy encryption and decryption of files and text on the clipboard among other things. This tool turns GnuPG into an easy to use part of your desktop. This is also what I use for some things.
- GnuPG-Plugin – this purports to integrate GnuPG more tightly into Outlook. I haven’t tried it and to be honest it is probably just as fast to use WinPT.
Surfing Safety:
- Anonymizer® – no software needed but there is a utility available. A free service is provided or you can pay for upgraded features. They claim that no information is logged at any time that can connect to you. In theory, even a court order would be unable to force disclosure as the information simply does not exist. I use the free versiona nd I will probably pay for it when the money becomes available.
- Freedom //websecure – a commercial tool that routes your browser through centralized, encrypted servers. Web sites don’t have any idea where or who you are. Of course, under extreme circumstances the central server may be used to track you. This won’t be a problem unless you run afoul of big three letter agencies so for most people this is more privacy than they have now.
- Norton Internet Security Professional Edition – not a private web browser exactly but it does have features to monitor and restrict what cookies you accept and to warn you before personal information is revealed. Also includes anti-virus and kick ass firewall. Pretty good stuff and a useful set of tools in any case.
- ZoneAlarm Pro – a personal firewall that also has some cookie blocking features. A free version without the cookie stuff is available and is a nice free alternative to the Norton tool if you need to go free.
- The Proxomitron – Universal Web Filter – the proximitron is a free tool and can be used to protect private information as well as block cookies as well as large number of other interesting manipulations of your HTTP stream. Kind of a techie tool but worth looking into.
Private email:
Obviously you want to look into the tools above under encryption to make the messages secure. But if you want to hide the origin and sometimes destination of your email then this is the stuff to look at.
- QuickSilver – one of a number of email privacy tools QuickSilver works with “mixmaster” to obfuscate your email. Basically, your email is multiply encrypted (via GnuPGP) and then routed through several email servers. None of the servers know both the origin and destination and the servers in the middle also don’t see the content of the email. This is about as secure as it gets. The installationw ill guide you through most of the work.
- HushMail – free encrypted anonymous web based email. Pretty cool stuff. Obviously this won’t protect you from your average three letter agency but it will go a long way to keeping your casual exchanges and identity safe. use it for personal ads or signing up to newsletters and so on. Anytime you want to try and stay a little apart from yourself. Connect this to a Blogger account for fairly private blogging and so on.
Private publishing:
- invisiblog.com (beta) – when used with [[GnuPG]] and QuickSilver this is a fully private weblog service. A little complex for non tech folks but cool.
- The Freenet Project – fully anonymous document publishing and file sharing. Pretty deep voodoo.
Other:
- defcon.one – proxy lists – a list of “open” proxies and relays, including SMTP. If you need ’em, you already know what they are.
- Tom McCune’s PGP Page – some good general info and Q&A.
- Invisible IRC Project – anonymous [[wp:IRC]].