'Hacktivists' offer stealth web

[unvi$ible]

hi,
always interesting topic.
This has been around for a while?
what do u think about it?
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20456822^15306^^nbv^15306,00.html?from=public_rss

[nihil]

Hmmmm,

The concept of hiding your true identity from websites is nothing new, but this bit intrigues me:

Torpark also hides computer users' identities from companies providing the internet services, according to its creators.

I don't see how I can hide from my ISP. I have an account that I have to log into. In the case of my ADSL I have to use my own static phone line as well? OK, that doesn't prove that it was me, but it does provide a link to my account.

I also wonder how difficult it would be for the forces of darkness to develop software that just looked for these rapidly changing addresses? Maybe it is just the paranoia of old age, but I sometimes think that having significantly more security than what would be expected can attract the wrong sort of attention?

[nihil]

Hi brokencrow ............. that is exactly my (limited) understanding........... they want to "charge me", and not let me "re-sell"?

I am rather interested in the bit I mentioned, because it seems rather important, with a lot of ramifications, perhaps?

[brokencrow]

Sorry, nihil, thought twice about that post and pulled it. I've been wanting to play with Torpark and am installing it as I type on a thumbdrive. I'm very curious as to what it shows to websites. Unfortunately, I don't have access to an ISP to see what they log. I'll let you know.

[brokencrow]

OK, here we go: I took a screenshot of the warning that pops up when you start Torpark. It seems it's not exactly what it's hyped to be. Hope this helps.

And it is indeed slow. I'm on a wireless connection right now using an old Prism card, and it took awhile to start, even prompting me at one point to keep trying.

[nihil]

No probs mate!

It is an interesting subject to me as well.............. a thread to be kept open until we have a much better picture IMHO?

[brokencrow]

This is interesting: through the years I've sometimes used grc.com for doing scans, so I took Torpark over there to see what I could see. I got a "Your Connection to Our Web Server is Probably 'Proxied'" page, so I took a screenshot (see .jpg) that has the bulk of the page. I find it unusual in that, as Steve states, GRC's scan usually can bypass a proxy, in my experience, even ones that claimed to be anonymous proxies. But not with Torpark.

edit -- Another notable anomaly: I used to be a heavy user of anonymous proxies back 2-3 years ago and ran into problems logging into Yahoo mail, particularly from "offshore" proxies. Torpark lets me log right in, even from offshore proxies. Fwiw.

[z31200n3]

Hello All,
I was just getting ready to post the link about Torpark, but I see i've been beaten to the punch :-)

One question I have....Sites that require a login, such as AO, use your computer's IP to verify that its really you (meaning, i cant login on my laptop, begin posting a thread, copy and paste the URL, email it to myself, and then resume posting on my Box w/o logging in on that computer as well...), right?

So.......if your IP changes quickly (or however fast it is), wouldnt that require logging in over and over and over just to be actively participating on sites like this? or even email, or like I said, any site requiring a login ID?

[brokencrow]

..if your IP changes quickly (or however fast it is), wouldnt that require logging in over and over and over just to be actively participating on sites like this?

Chit, my ip address rolled over in Torpark, and sure enough, I had to login again. This is going to be a pain on some sites. I suspect it's going to vary from site to site, the primary contigency being the cookie that particular site places.

edit -- it seems things are not so cut-and-dry: the Torpark proxy just rolled over again, and I'm still logged into both AO and Yahoo. But I had an eye on it and wonder if there isn't some time constraint on the cookie. Just my two bits...

edit #2 -- AO threw me out after just a couple of minutes on the new proxy address, but Yahoo still has me. Go figure...

[netRealm]

Looks to me like this is just using TOR for web browsing, rolled into an easy to use package.