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Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Jul 19, 2007 07:29 PM
from the end-of-the-road dept.
from the end-of-the-road dept.
RobertB-DC writes "With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell's privacy blog. Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."
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May I be the first... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:May I be the first... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:May I be the first... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:May I be the first... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
sureproxy.com!
[/blatant advertising]
Re:May I be the first... (Score:5, Informative)
The reason Private Surfing was discontinued is because it was designed almost 10 years ago using Apache modules coded in C and some horrible Lex. All of our flagship products since then (Privacy Manager, Anonymizer 2004/2005, Total Privacy Suite and Anonymous Surfing) have been evolutions of that code base. Today our Anonymous Surfing server looks nothing like the old Private Surfing. PS was badly showing its age, and the reality of the situation was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to compile current versions of Apache with that old code. Every Apache security update provided more headaches for us. It didn't really work with any of the newer Web 2.0 AJAX stuff either. Javascript is extremely difficult to anonymize in a web based client and still continue to work. Gmail and Google Maps, just to name two, were completely unusable. This is also the case with any other web based proxy that I have ever seen.
Also, PS had very few subscribers, and an extremely low conversion rate for the free PS to any other product, even though free PS was very overloaded, slow, had rate limits, request count limits, blocking of many major websites (including Slashdot) and our pay services are very cheap. Total Net Shield is less than $9/month, and Anonymous Surfing is $2.50/month (seriously, how much of a tightwad do you have to be to put up with using the free version of PS every day and not pay for AS?). After all, Anonymizer is a business, and from the business side of the company it wasn't cost effective to continue maintaining PS any longer. We didn't kill it, so much as it died a slow lingering death of natural causes.
Contrary to popular belief, our products are not Windows only. Unfortunately, the Anonymous Surfing and Total Net Shield clients we produce are Windows based. However, Total Net Shield uses pure and simple SSH tunneling. That means any SSH compliant client (including the handy dandy (and bundled with your favorite Linux distribution, Mac OS X, Solaris and *BSD), and open source, OpenSSH) can be used with TNS. That also means that for people experienced with setting up SSH tunnels you can configure it to use any TCP port, or OpenSSH's built in SOCKS proxy. Nyms (disposable e-mail addresses) is fully web based. All of our enterprise level products (check our website if you're curious what this is) are platform independent and require no software installation.
We also have some benefits over TOR. Because we combine multi-layer proxies with multi-layer NAT our users can't be tracked by clock skews, there's no exit node snooping vulnerability (yes, technically we can see everything but all of our products are either not logged or logs are purged after 2 days), and we have a lot better speed/reliability than TOR.
One last thing, is that we the Anonymizer administrators are a part of this community. We work for Anonymizer because we're concerned about privacy, free speech, etc. We see and hear what's going on. Most of us read sites like slashdot, digg and del.icio.us every day. We don't always comment and sometimes we can't. But we're anonymously standing here right next to you.
Parent
LOL (Score:2, Funny)
no loss (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:no loss (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:no loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:no loss (Score:5, Interesting)
Held:
Section 3599.09(A)'s prohibition of the distribution of anonymous campaign literature abridges the freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment.
--Mcintyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1975) [findlaw.com]
Parent
Re:no loss - I agree (Score:2)
I agree, Unipeak was used to post a threatening comment on my webpage about litigation [cgstock.com] I'm involved in, apparently by the other party in the lawsuit:
You have to wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Logic? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the NSA/FBI/etc wants to broker/enforce a court order/etc this does nothing to slow that down.
never was the best solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The vast majority of so called "child porn" consists of pictures taken by teens of either themselves or their partners. Pictures take consensually. Pictures taken by minors, not creepy old people. Talk to any socially active high schooler. They'll know people their own age who have sex and will know someone who has pics of the act.
If you want to crack down on rape, go ahead, but stop suppressing
Re:never was the best solution (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the source for that assertion?
Children are (rightly) considered to be unable to make informed choices due to their lack of knowledge and experience about the world and are thus not considered to be fully responsible for their actions. I'm sure you'd agree that's true of a 5 year old and also agree that a (mentally competent) 30 year old should be held responsible for their actions. Rights without responsibility would be a recipe for disaster, so those with limited responsibility get limited rights. Feel free to debate where the line between child and adult should be, but there really does need to be a line. If you think that line is set too high, don't forget that the people drawing that line all have first-hand experience of being teenagers; they know how much they thought they knew and how little they really knew about life back then.
Parent
One Advantage (Score:2)
Re:One Advantage (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Yet another alternative. (Score:5, Informative)
I've been anonymized (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing to get excited about (Score:5, Informative)
We have not stopped providing privacy services. They are all now client based. It is the only way to ensure the security of our users. While the basic service is currently windows only (which is sad since I am a Mac person myself) our TNS product is completely functional from Mac or Linux (or Windows).
We are in no way downsizing our services. There were so few active users of our Private Surfing service, compared to our other services; it made no sense to try to keep a broken product limping along.
As far as security goes, since I see a few posts about that, it is simply a matter of personal choice. We deliver the best performance available. In almost 12 years of service no user has ever had his surfing activities compromised in any way. If we had some kind of law enforcement back door, it would hardly be a secret at this point. Alternatives require you to trust some exit point of unknown trustworthiness that may be actively modifying or monitoring content. There are advantages and disadvantages to all security models. In the real world and for most users, I think Anonymizer provides the best solution. Make up your own mind for your own circumstances.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to get excited about (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't complete understand this statement, because I went to your website and it specifically says that your TNS product is supported in windows only. Could you please explain? Thanks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(PS. Joke. I hope he doesn't actually give this as an answer)
Re:Nothing to get excited about (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Child Pornography and Terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, it's not like you're hiding kiddie porn on your hard drive, eh?
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
I know this may be difficult to understand... but the internet CAN'T HARM ANYONE it's a bunch of interconnected computers... People on the other hand, can harm other people. People can use an item, be it the internet, a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, a stick, a heavy rock, a little rock, a bomb, a pen, a towel, a piece of rope, or a rotten egg to harm people... but the inanimate object can't harm someone.
Nephilium
Re: (Score:2)
The relevant portion is: "keep track of people that use the internet to harm others".
Call me crazy, but I don't think pointing out that the internet can't hurt anyone is a valid response... cause, you know, he never said it could.
I don't even necessarily agree with the GP, but that was just lame.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The solution to terrorists and pedophiles abusing the 'Net is to hunt down and kill the terrorists and pedophiles, not harm the 'Net.
Re: (Score:2)
If they're anonymous, hunt them down how?
Re:Child Pornography and Terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Child Pornography and Terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is while agreeing wholly with your sentiment, in practice drawing the line is very hard. Weaponized forms of super-bugs I think is an unambiguous no-no, but *research* along that line is quite necessary, at the least so that someone has a chance of countering a bio-weapon when one is let loose. How do you loosen the cork without letting the genie out? Even relatively small labs now have the potential ability to create their own customized bugs and knowledge is in general circulation, so it is already too late to entirely prevent a future problem. Only mitigation is left.
It is unfortunate because, in many cases, I think we do need to put the breaks on a bit. Our track record with many kinds of meddling is poor, and we are doing so at an increasing rate; so quickly we cannot adequately measure effects to better target our meddling. In practice, however, stopping the train is not easy.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really stupid question here... (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw is that you're assuming that a desire to be anonymous means you have a REASON to be anonymous.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And to think, YOU are the example of INSIGHTFUL. Way to set the bar pretty low. LOL.
Anyway. You have a reason to want privacy. Everyone does. Whether the reason is broad and abstract, such as a desire to relax in a safe space, or whether it's specific, such as fear of retribution, you still have a reason. If you don't have a reason, you're just a lowly animal getting by on stimulus/respons
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/2
when it comes to politics... (general thoughts) (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone doubts that, just think about a few things-are any nations going out of their way to pull monitoring cameras, or is the trend to keep installing more and more, even in the so called "free" nations? How about official eavesdropping and data retention laws for ISPs and so on? Are you feeling lucky with corporate data mining from anyplace, or are all of them complete fucktards about gobbling up all the data they can scrounge? And then "sharing" with the local regime/council/government/ruling class overlords? Are there any nations which haven't jumped on the "terrorism" bandwagon to excuse passing more restrictive laws and for increasing their so called "security" budgets?
The bottom line is, it doesn't matter where you live, if you aren't concerned over voicing your opinion, you aren't paying attention or you have a hidden suicidal death wish you are in psychological denial over or you have never read one history book.
Sure, a lot of places you still can talk or write-within some restrictions, but eventually your words may come back to haunt you.
You look back in history it's the same story over and over again, no matter how "cool" governments are, or started out as, no matter how "popular" with "the people", eventually ALL of them have gone through a dictatorial stage and either totally collapsed, or partially collapsed then went through a series of (usually worse) dictatorships. And, again speaking historically, events can change "your" local reality in the space of one day. One single day,. one event is all it takes to completely change things. Some archduke gets whacked. A big legislature building burns down, and a patsy is blamed for it. A very popular young president, then his brother, same thing, whacked, patsies picked up. Some planes hit some ships in a tropical island port. Some other planes hit some buildings. Some subway cars and buses explode. Some insane and too brave for reality idealist stands in front of a tank. A few colonels one night decide to "regime change" locally. A dictator gets sick, leaves the nation to get medical care, a firebrand cleric flies in and takes over. A ruler and his advisors decides to lie about attacks on destroyers, the big lie stands for fourty years.
And so on. Stuff happens. Politics is always chancy. And no, anyone "you", you don't live in a "free" country, although you might not live in one of the more restricted at this point in time countries. The *scale* is the only variable, and history shows us that variables are just that and can and often do change with no notice to you.
What you thought was safe and free political speech yesterday is now "terrorist hate speech" or some other boggey man phrase they come up with, and you're on the shitlist record for it. Several years ago did you donate some spare change, a few bucks, to some charity? Whoops, now you are on some watch list and could be arrested for aiding the enemy, whoops, merely "detained"...........
Reality is, politics and smugness shouldn't go together.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Political message: ok, I understand that if you're living in a restricted country.
A good percentage of the internet users & slashdot readers are
from the USA. So this is a very valid need what with the Patriot
Act, and all the other stuff which the Supreme Dictator has
changed.
Re:Really stupid question here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why anonymous? See the first sentence of my post.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I consider that victory.
Re:Really stupid question here... (Score:4, Insightful)
You also could cause yourself to fall under moral discrimination if your boss knew your interests without your providing them. Boss = anti-abortion, You = pro-abortion, and after searching for an abortion clinic, your progress reports mysteriously tank and you have no idea why. You could also run into problems if your boss knew you were searching Monster for "unix+system+administrator", which coincidently is your job title.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)