- What Is A VPN
- What Is Tor
- What Is A Proxy
- What Should I Choose
- Conclusion
What Is A VPN
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network.
A VPN is a server in an offsite location that funnels all of your data through their servers, in nearly all cases they encrypt your data with 128 or 256 bit SSL encryption to make your browsing just more secure
The point of using one of these is to hide your actual IP address, These also spoof your location to where the server is located. For example if I lived in Australia and wanted to access a site that only allowed registrations from America, I could get on a VPN located in America and then from the websites point of view I would be located in America. Other uses for a VPN are for hiding your browsing data from your ISP, If a federal warrant is obtained for the use of your browsing history you will be safe, as all they will see are a lot of connections to a VPN server and no actual connections to a website.
What I look for in a VPN are 3 things that I will go into in more detail below. No Logs, High Speeds, Offshore Hosts
The reason why I look for No Logs is because once a federal warrant is obtained for your browsing data then your ISP is obliged to provide the IP address of your VPN provider which in turn will have to provide your browsing logs, most VPN's keep logs for 1 week but some extend up to 1 year
I look for high speeds for obvious reasons, the higher the speed the faster you will browse. To get the fastest browsing experience I recommend choosing a country that is close to you but your country has no jurisdiction over it. For example if you lived in England but had a VPN provider in Cameroon, England would possibly strongarm Cameroon into giving them the logs due to Cameroon being one Commonwealth States (http://goo.gl/MWHgH)
Offshore hosts are in the most demand because they are usually not associated with the United States Of America, as said above you look for countries which have no association with the country you live in
What Is Tor
http://goo.gl/GGUI2
Although Tor is a modified version of Firefox, but is not a browser. It's a network [1], that prides itself on making YOU anonymous, it runs through a complicated series of servers that is called "The Onion Network". The browser is just a modified Firefox that's configured to work well with Tor. [2]. It run's off of donations and is a free to download and use.
A basic picture guide direct from Tors website
How TOR works 1.
Spoiler (Click to View)
This browser is used a lot on the on line hacking world, as it usually isn't blocked by websites as it has so many nodes to run off of. To get the most out of tor and be provided with the maximum amount of security you should always disable Javascript while using the browser, as it is possible for websites to gather information off of you and/or hack your computer by using exploits
It has a simple GUI and is very easy to follow, as soon as you open the program it generates you another IP to use while the browser is in use, This can also be changed at any time, Depending on what you are doing you should change your IP anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours, I usually recommend you change your IP every hour
What Is A Proxy
A proxy is an on line version of a VPN, these are most commonly used by school kids and people wanting to bypass restrictions on the websites they are allowed to vist, There are so many proxys on line it takes only a quick google search to find hundreds of thousands of them, The most well known proxy provider is http://www.hidemyass.com/ and they can generate a lot of money by posting google adsense ad's at the bottom of the page.
There are 3 main sources that are used when creating a proxy
PHPProxy
Glype
CGIProxy
I personally prefer Glype as it provides the most user friendly experience out of all the other proxys, Most proxys are just hosted on cheap $3 hosts, usually in the United States and they do keep logs
What Should I Choose
To be completely anonymous I recommend using a combination of 1-2 paid VPN's which have all of the options that I listed above (No Logs, high Speed Connection, Offshore Hosting) while also using the Tor Browser, this will slow your internet down by 20-30% as it has to go to a VPN server to a VPN server to Tor and then do the return journey, but that is a small price to pay compared to getting caught by the Feds doing something that you shouldn't.
If you have any questions post them below
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