If you had any faith left in anonymous email services, now would be the time to let that go. New court documents show that in chasing down associates of Freedom Hosting, the FBI managed to download the entire email database of TorMail. And now it’s using that information to take on the Darknet.
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Ever since Edward Snowden pulled back the curtain on the NSA’s relentless snooping, the anonymous search engine DuckDuckGo’s been breaking traffic records practically everyday. The privacy-friendly site just announced that it answered a whopping one billion search queries last year.
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This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but the NSA has reportedly been trying (and failing) to break into the Tor network for years. It turns out that Tor, a suite of tools to protect anonymity online, is just too secure as an infrastructure. Individual users, however, are less secure.
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The anonymous, secure Tor network
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Last week left cybersecurity nerds scratching their heads after traffic to Tor, the free software suite that enables anonymity online
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Since the revelations about NSA spying came to the surface earlier this summer, everybody’s paying a little bit more attention to their privacy online. That’s good news for Tor, a suite of software and network of computers that enables you to use the internet anonymously. And for anyone who uses it.
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Over the weekend, security researchers noticed some strange activity happening on the Tor network, an anonymous "darknet" used for everything from private browsing to selling drugs
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Google has drawn flak for wanting much of our access to its services linked under a single Google+ identity — and preferably a real one. However, company internet evangelist Vint Cerf argues that Google shouldn’t (and doesn’t) cross a line in the sand on user anonymity. He contends in a Reuters interview that no one should be forced to use their real name, and that Google won’t press for one, especially in politically oppressive situations where there could be dire consequences to protesting under a real identity. What about less sensitive conditions, however? Cerf would like to strike a balance: he prefers solutions that “strongly authenticate” people when necessary, without eliminating anonymity altogether. We’re glad to hear that there’s a place Google won’t go in its quest for social network supremacy, although we’re sure some would like the search giant to take another step back and restore the controls over anonymity and privacy that they believe have been lost.
[Image credit: Joy Ito, Flickr]
Source: Reuters
When you think of privacy protection, chances are Facebook does not immediately spring to mind. But anonymity researchers are suggesting that social networks may hold the key to better anonymous online interactions. More »
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