Privacy Checkup 2021

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3119967d0c said:
It's still a good idea to use a VPN before Tor while doing sensitive stuff. Just look at how this guy got caught. If he'd been using a VPN he would have had a lot more plausible deniability.
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No, this is a special case because he was on a monitored network, as the article says:
There are precautions Kim could have taken, experts said. Reporters and political dissidents, using the Internet in conflict areas like Syria, are taught to boot up Tor from USB thumb drives or compact discs instead of their hard drives.

Kim could have used a computer other than his own MacBook Pro or logged onto another Wi-Fi network. Tor, said Wisniewski, does require some technical expertise to guarantee total anonymity. Under most circumstances, Wisniewski said, Kim's security precautions probably would have protected him.
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Using a VPN will actually increase the certainty with which he could be identified although it'd take a bit longer cus of warrants and such. If it's a regular VPN they'll probably give up your data and if it's a personal one they'll just get access from the hosting provider unless it's in a country outside of 14 eyes. Even if you have a personal VPN outside of 14 eyes you can still be caught by having someone keep tabs on the timing of requests between the VPN and Tor nodes (which is why the NSA and GCHQ run so many Tor nodes) and this is easier with a VPN because there are more variables to the connection.

It's also worth watching this Defcon talk:
 
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Philosophy Phil said:
Not buying a burner phone for every post you make here, and immediately destroying it after each one.

Get on my level.
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Lol, not making an account leading a false trail to random British citizens who you can then laugh at as a horde of rainbow clad Rag and Bone men beat them to death for using the word Troon.
 
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Are Bitwarden/KeePassXC that good? I use Dashlane, but I’d switch if they are better/safer
 
Sage In All Fields said:
No, this is a special case because he was on a monitored network, as the article says:

Using a VPN will actually increase the certainty with which he could be identified although it'd take a bit longer cus of warrants and such. If it's a regular VPN they'll probably give up your data and if it's a personal one they'll just get access from the hosting provider unless it's in a country outside of 14 eyes. Even if you have a personal VPN outside of 14 eyes you can still be caught by having someone keep tabs on the timing of requests between the VPN and Tor nodes (which is why the NSA and GCHQ run so many Tor nodes) and this is easier with a VPN because there are more variables to the connection.

It's also worth watching this Defcon talk:
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It is unlikely that your outgoing VPN traffic- such as Tor use- can be correlated back to you unless you are already being specifically targeted. Of course, don't use unsafe VPNs- Private Internet Access, CyberGhost, etc.
 
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3119967d0c said:
It's still a good idea to use a VPN before Tor while doing sensitive stuff. Just look at how this guy got caught. If he'd been using a VPN he would have had a lot more plausible deniability.
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His dumb ass got caught because he was connected to Tor via Harvard's wi-fi network at the exact time the emails were sent, and the university kept enough logs to be able to determine who was connected to the wi-fi and also accessing Tor at that moment, and (mostly) because he fessed up when men in suits came knocking on his door to ask about it. I don't think using a VPN instead of, or in addition to, Tor would've helped, as he'd have still been that guy who was connected to the university's network and accessing an anonymization service at the exact time that the emails were sent, who spilled his guts the moment they confronted him.

He just happened to have been logged in suspicious activity ("connected to Tor" isn't illegal, but it made him a suspect) in basically the very first place they looked (the campus wi-fi). And even so, the evidence they had was probably circumstantial at best. Using literally any other wi-fi network to connect to Tor would've made it very unlikely that they'd have even identified him as a suspect.

Maybe he'd have had an easier time trying to argue that he was just using his favorite filesharing network to download pirated movies a Linux distro if it was a VPN instead of Tor, but that still relies on security through not confessing when you're one of the prime suspects.
 
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Kosher Salt said:
His dumb ass got caught because he was connected to Tor via Harvard's wi-fi network at the exact time the emails were sent, and the university kept enough logs to be able to determine who was connected to the wi-fi and also accessing Tor at that moment, and (mostly) because he fessed up when men in suits came knocking on his door to ask about it. I don't think using a VPN instead of, or in addition to, Tor would've helped, as he'd have still been that guy who was connected to the university's network and accessing an anonymization service at the exact time that the emails were sent, who spilled his guts the moment they confronted him.

He just happened to have been logged in suspicious activity ("connected to Tor" isn't illegal, but it made him a suspect) in basically the very first place they looked (the campus wi-fi). And even so, the evidence they had was probably circumstantial at best. Using literally any other wi-fi network to connect to Tor would've made it very unlikely that they'd have even identified him as a suspect.

Maybe he'd have had an easier time trying to argue that he was just using his favorite filesharing network to download pirated movies a Linux distro if it was a VPN instead of Tor, but that still relies on security through not confessing when you're one of the prime suspects.
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Oh yeah, obviously you should never help the police, but using a VPN helps break the chain. Obviously, if you're doing something really sensitive, it should be with a random MAC and hostname on a network far away from your usual haunts with no cellphones or other tracking devices on you, but using a VPN and Tor as well is just common sense.

Using a VPN alone wouldn't have been enough for that guy, as they could just look at who on their network was connecting to 'random VPN server 456' at the time nastygrams were sent from some email service connected to by 'random VPN server 456'.
 
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3119967d0c said:
It is unlikely that your outgoing VPN traffic- such as Tor use- can be correlated back to you unless you are already being specifically targeted. Of course, don't use unsafe VPNs- Private Internet Access, CyberGhost, etc.
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They won't look at outgoing traffic, they'll look at the traffic to the VPN and correlate it with the traffic to the Tor node.
It's definitley unlikely unless you're being specifically targetted, but it's still good to know what maximum opsec looks like on the off chance.
 
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