Anonymous on the Internet - Maintaining Anonymity

Soldato
Joined
1 Oct 2008
Posts
12,466
Location
Designing Buildings
With the recent re-emergence of 'Anonymous' (read a specific topic on him / her / them on another forum) it got me thinking that how does an organisation stay anonymous on the internet, because surely on some level there is a way of finding out who each person is?

It amused me that Anonymous and to a lesser extent anonymous artist Banksy have a raft of social media platforms to promote themselves yet they still want to be anonymous.

At a basic level, if you sign up to a social media platform you have to give away a certain amount of personal information and if what I've been reading correctly, occassionally they may ask you to email them a form of identification so that your account can be 'verified'.

I've seen on here that there are the obvious ways to trace back certain elements within either an email header or website using tools like whoislookup etc to find things which aren't necessarily readily available to the average person (although these tools make it available).

Pieces of information, like contact information, can be withheld by a website if you pay x amount so people can't see that when they use lookup tools, however, the website host will still have that information.

On a higher level of anonymity, the use of a VPN to disguise where in the world you are. Surely if you sign up to one of these then the company themselves will hold information on who you are and can theoretically be hacked and information found out?

Regardless of you stance on ethical / unethical hacking / cyber attacks / cyber terrorism or whatever you want to call it surely someone somewhere can find out who these people are?

Does anyone agree or can someone truly remain anonymous on the internet?
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Apr 2013
Posts
12,370
Location
La France
No. If a country’s security services want to know who someone is, they can. Either by using their cyber security resources o back trace or the old fashioned way of persuading an associate of the target to give them the information.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Mar 2010
Posts
12,305
I've seen on here that there are the obvious ways to trace back certain elements within either an email header or website using tools like whoislookup etc to find things which aren't necessarily readily available to the average person (although these tools make it available).

Pieces of information, like contact information, can be withheld by a website if you pay x amount so people can't see that when they use lookup tools, however, the website host will still have that information.

I think since the GDPR rules were introduced, domain name registrar information isn't really useful anymore. There was a cafe near to where i live that was quite popular and closed down suddenly a few months ago, recently there's been construction works doing a lot of work, so i wanted to do some digging to see if the owner had gone bankrupt etc, but looking at the whois info on the website barely gives any info.

On a higher level of anonymity, the use of a VPN to disguise where in the world you are. Surely if you sign up to one of these then the company themselves will hold information on who you are and can theoretically be hacked and information found out?

There's nothing stopping you putting in "fake names", the tricky part will be paying for the service - your bank should flag up fraudulent activity if the name on a service was completely different to yours. So things like bitcoin would be the ideal way to purchase the service. You can always get things like pre-paid cards that you can purchase with cash and you don't have to pass over any details for those.

Either way, i can imagine it takes a lot of work and a tremendous amount of discipline to stay anonymous.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Aug 2007
Posts
9,688
Location
Liverpool
You could remain fairly anonymous, hard work tho.

This. You can buy VPN with a gift card bought cash at any retailer, or even online. Some companies like Mullvad accept cash in the mail - and they only use a single string of numbers as your account ID. Generate a random new account ID over TOR, and mail in some cash with that number on a slip of paper. Your account is then live and anonymous.

TOR is a thing. A live USB with Tails or Qubes booted into RAM and a VPN connected over TOR, with impeccable 'hygiene' will hide you fairly well. No logging in to services, disposable emails from secure services, random long passphrases, never using personal sites/logins on your secure connection, spoofed MAC, etc. Check out books like The Art of Invisibility by Kevin Mitnick, and anything written by Bruce Schneier and EFF.
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
Banksy is a product if he weren't he wouldn't get so much publicity and would have been arrested for vandalism by now.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Aug 2007
Posts
9,688
Location
Liverpool
Would these sources not store information which could then trace back to you though?

No. Tails and Qubes are Linux live USBs that live and work in your RAM. The second you close down the machine, it's gone forever. They store no data by design. TOR is actually primarily paid for by the US government, for their clandestine ops. They opened it to the public because otherwise everyone on TOR would be a three-letter agent and stand out. TOR is decentralised, open source and you go through at least three anonymous nodes (entry, middle and exit), which are blind to each other. Nobody knows where you came from or who you are, just what hop on the service you want next.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,078
Location
Stoke area
You can also photoshop fake ID for social media accounts and use the fakes to authenticate the account.

I know this has been done with a wedding certificate and a fake profile and worked. Account was locked for being fake until proven otherwise, ID sent, and it was unlocked and is still in use.
 
Caporegime
Joined
24 Oct 2012
Posts
25,020
Location
Godalming
You can also photoshop fake ID for social media accounts and use the fakes to authenticate the account.

I know this has been done with a wedding certificate and a fake profile and worked. Account was locked for being fake until proven otherwise, ID sent, and it was unlocked and is still in use.

People used to (still do? idk) do this with bookies too, to abuse their bonuses. Many bookies have cottoned on now and ask for a photo of you holding your ID.
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2016
Posts
8,757
Location
Oldham
I always thought that these Anonymous types use a multi layered approach for VPN's and other ways to hide their IP's in different countries. That way most police forces wouldn't assign resources to attempt to track you unless it was a big crime.

Tor isn't 100% anonymous.
 
Back
Top Bottom