Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued 159
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."
Well.... (Score:1, Interesting)
May I be the first... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:May I be the first... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:May I be the first... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:May I be the first... (Score:4, Funny)
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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.
LOL (Score:2, Funny)
A box of chocolates (Score:2)
no loss (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:no loss (Score:5, Funny)
Re:no loss (Score:5, Insightful)
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But only if your server is analogous to an old world bazaar or a mall. When a case comes down to private property rights v. free speech rights, free speech can win occasionally. There's a case
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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]
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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.
I for one (Score:1, Funny)
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never was the best solution (Score:5, Insightful)
"Devils Advocate" question (Score:2)
IANAL, I'm just asking...
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If a private individual runs an anonymizing service, is he protected as a "common carrier", on the off chance that someone figures out that illegal traffic was aided and abetted by such service?
If I'm not mistaken, when using Tor the content is encrypted in a way that a relay has no idea of content it is transmitting. In the unlikely situation that someone could prove that the illegal content passed through its relay, the admin could just say that it had not idea of what the content was (which is true).
There are usually 4 relays in a chain, the last is the one that makes the connection to the public server using an plain text connection (in the case of HTTP traffic, tor supports about every TC
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Special software that is closed source is just too fishy for me.
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If I'm running a TOR server and you connect to a dodgy site through me, don't I get the blame? Am I just relying on the intelligence of the judge/jury to get me off because I'm not responsible for what other TOR users are doing?
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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
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A self-taken nude frontal shot in a mirror (think 'cam whore') of a 16 or 17 year old girl is illegal. I don't agree with that, I have no moral objection to it, but it is. On the other hand a video of a 16 year old couple (i.e. both participants being 16 years old) having intercourse I regard as morally questionable (But now I'm almost 22, I probably wouldn't have
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.
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And don't give me this 'harming themselves' BS. Where's freedom gone when you start to decide which choices that someone makes are valid and which aren't?
One Advantage (Score:2)
Re:One Advantage (Score:4, Funny)
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Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization. Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are supporting Tor's development as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers? A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.
From the Tor site.
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.
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I guess inquiring minds want to know, WILL there be a Mac version of the basic service be provided someday in the near future?
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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.
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(PS. Joke. I hope he doesn't actually give this as an answer)
Re:Nothing to get excited about (Score:4, Informative)
No conspiracy here (Score:1)
Better Alternatives (Score:2, Informative)
We've had better web proxy alternatives with fewer restrictions for years... BlastProxy [blastproxy.com] and ProxyStorm [www.proxystorm] are two web based anonymous proxies that I often use.
Other networks, such as Tor [eff.org] allow users, who are willing to install additional software components, browse anonymously. Although, nothing really beats the convienence of the web proxies!
Closed source advantages (Score:2, Interesting)
Did I really just read on
Crap! (Score:2)
No outcry?! (Score:1)
"With ... no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service"
No outcry?! A private company makes decisions well within its rights, and there's no outcry!? Wow, I almost feel young again.*
* If you're not "old", please ignore this seemingly incoherent post.**
** By "old", I mean, like, mid 30's and up.
Ohhhhhh right. (Score:2)
Oh, is that what closed-source means?
Re:Child Pornography and Terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, it's not like you're hiding kiddie porn on your hard drive, eh?
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The law needs to be able to keep track of people that use the internet to harm others. The law (like religion and social taboos to a lesser extent) is necessary to protect regular people from the people that lack empathy. IMHO.
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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
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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.
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To think of a few:
1) All sort of lies, scams, frauds to steal your money like stock scams, 411 scams etc.
2) Post private information like your medical record, stolen sex pics with your wife (or not) etc.
3) Post lies, threats, harassment like threats to kill you, post pictures of your kids with name and address and an invitat
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Isn't capitalism [wikipedia.org] great?
Isn't freedom of speech [wikipedia.org] great?
Have you EVER been to a public restroom [wikipedia.org]?
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The solution to terrorists and pedophiles abusing the 'Net is to hunt down and kill the terrorists and pedophiles, not harm the 'Net.
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If they're anonymous, hunt them down how?
Re:Child Pornography and Terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
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all walkie-talkies will have individual serial numbers, and the serial number must be transmitted every second. Since this is serious security, the serial number and the transmission hardware must be tamper-prove - expensive, but no amount of money is too much where security is concerned
It reminds me of a trip to Dominican Republic I made a few years ago. The travel agent told me that walkie-talkies were illegal in this country. Being a libertarian, I brought them anyway (If a law annoys me I simply ignore it [wikipedia.org]) and a couples day into the trip, I saw two big military trucks patrolling in front of the hotel. I closed my walkie-talkie and put it in my pocket, but I always wondered if that was just a coincidence or if they were looking for the "insurgents" that were using "illegal" walkie-tal
Ridiculous ! (Score:2)
"all telephone calls will also require biometric authentication"
This is pointless unless we also require long term retention policies. One year of recordings of all calls should suffice.
"Historically, many annonymous notes have been written on paper. We must institute a new system where paper is only available to authorised government agents; illegial possession of paper is also grounds for shippment to Gitmo."
This should not be necessary. It should suffice to put a code on the pape
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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.
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It might be right to kill people under certain circumstances. For example, play with a fake situation that you are standing next to a group of terrorists w
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Absolutely! And we can thank George Bush for it!
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There are other tech forums, ya know.
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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.
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It's official, the only people left in America who approve of the President have him confused with someone else.
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I think it is a flaw to think that people know what those reasons are. We are, much more than we like to believe or admit, driven by fairly primitive instincts. Check out the studies showing the relative importance of politicians facial features and their policies for one example. If your primitive monkey brain says something is good (taking a drug, hiring the better-looking but less-qualified job applicant,
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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
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http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/2
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And to think I actually thought I might get some smart answers. Boy, was I wrong.
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I'm well aware of the issues of privacy under the items on the list I provided. I wanted someone to state specifically why it's important to them and to give me a reason that was unexpected or unique. I guess that's too simple a motivation for you to understand.
The criticism was simply the
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.
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If we're run by the church today, how do you know beforehand you shouldn't say "I believe in God" if later the secularists take over and ban all religion? Or, how about "I am gay" but then the church takes over?
You'd have to post everything anonymously, or nothing, because you won't know which comment will get you into trouble. :
This is nonsense .... (Score:2)
Granted, at some point a popular asshole might change your democracy back to dictatorship or at least autocracy, but still, blame your idiot fellow citizens for that.
An
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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.
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I consider that victory.
Don't Believe It (Score:1, Insightful)
So, what do you want, a fucking medal? Aren't you just the saviour putting their head above the parapet. Look, buddy. I don't care. There's plenty of shit on this side of the fence, I assure you. Most of what you see is commercial bullshit. For all the wealth and freedom there's plenty of people living in poverty and suffering from bad government. The Wes
"Free of Swindlers and Liars"? (Score:1)
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All I can think of is...
* Whistle blowing: but, that could be done by pay phone or snail mail
* Police informant: but, that would be abused by false reports, plus police usually have less faith in anonymous reports, although anonymous child abuse reports are taken seriously
* Political message: ok, I understand that if you're living in a restricted country.
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Yeah, it's not illegal to talk about dragging an entire cooler of booze to the beach and throwing an all-day party where we're blitzed out of our minds, but that's not how I like to b
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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.