Hiding ip

Ok i just returned from vacation. I read a few books and in one of them there was a site called hackerwhacker. It scans your ports that are open. Now it seemed like a good i dea so i scanned. I saw nothing. But they did have my IP and other things. Like the last page i visited. I know that thats easy to do but i still want to make it a bit harder for them. I am using firefox 1.0.6 with a proxy extension but that doesn't work. An got an idea's on how to hide or make it harder for people to see your ip and other things??
Help will be greatly appreciated. (did I spell that correctly?)
By the way the site is www.hackerwhacker.com

Dakx

You can't really hide your IP or your ISP wouldn't let you connect. Sites showing your IP and then saying that this makes you vulnerable to attack are preying on your paranoia.

Using a reasonable personal firewall + the usual antispyware/AV tools would keep you safe enough online. You would not appear to many automated scans.
A determined and skilled cracker could still damage your machine but in reality anyone with those skills is not really going to be interested in you.

Have a read of some of the security tutorials in here they'll keep you right.

Thx. I found some way's but they slow me down a lot. I got a firewall aswell as av and spyware detectors (would be wierd to be a member of AO and not have those.)
M going to install a second firewall aswell. Because i really am paranoid. Zonealarm and sygate :D

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M going to install a second firewall aswell. Because i really am paranoid. Zonealarm and sygate

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thats a bad idea. They will conflict. if you want two firewalls, use one hardware and one software. two software is a HUGE waste of resources and will casue more grief than good.

A tool I use on my daughters machine is The Proxomitron http://duke.usask.ca/~macphed/prox/
That helps with the local shite, cleans the crap off many pages. oh and some sites complain that they dont know what a Victor Lawnmower is ;)
now as for masking your IP.. well the packets need a return address.. dont they?.. use a proxy server or 2.. Useing a proxy server is no guarantee that a malicious code wont find its way to your machine, you will need a filtering proxy
If you want to play with packet filtering and firewalls.. have a look at Squid and Smoothwall or IPcop..
oh one more thing to readup on TOR..

Now Dakx, here's my question...why the paranoia? If you aren't doing anything illegal and have secured your sensitive information, then relax and use a good software and hardware firewall and you will be ok. If you still are paranoid, stop doing anything illegal (if you are that is) and remove all sensitive files from your computer after backing them up to a DVDRW/CDRW.

Why does he have to be breaking the law to be paranoid? Perhaps it isn't the police that he's protecting himself from. (trying to at least ;) )

Hardware vs software firewalls don't matter so much depending on the quality of the firewall you're putting in place. I'd recommend you get or set up an inexpensive router as your border device and use it as a packet filter (very simple firewall). Behind that put up a linux box (with say...netfilter) or something similar that can do some stateful inspection....You can even put squid on it as a proxy/filter for your web traffic.

Breaking it out like this can make it easier for you to manage and maintain in your brain while working on it, and can be done for just a small amount of cash. There are also plenty of free resources on the internet to help you learn to do this work.

Like the man said above, you don't have to be doing anything illegal to be paranoid.

Just do your research and the proper amount of planning before you take action. Putting the two personal firewalls on your one machine probably isn't going to be all that helpful for ya. If you have any questions on setting stuff up or on how to test it once it's built just shoot me a note and I'll point you in the right direction.

Do you shread your junk mail too, or are you only paranoid about computer security? I find many people who will go to no end to protect their computer from the internet but have no problems throwing away credit card applications without even ripping them up. I would rather deploy an acceptable level of security across all domains than to focus on one completely and ignore others.

I shred all my old mail. =p

keep your computer up to date on service packs and patchs (thats all the software on your computer) and take basic precautions and you'll be fine. it takes finding a vulnerability or getting a user to do something foolish for someone to breakin and/or cause harm.


anti-virus and anti-spyware software are a must. well not really a must but are much more forgiving if you make a mistake...and it doesn't take much to make one (going to a warez site is a mistake) along with something that prevents and alerts to registry changes. most maleware needs to make a reg entry in order to restart with your computer. spybot s&d along with a few others have this capability included. theCleaner from moosoft has a reg tracker/alerter that doesn't expire like its trojan detector does when the trial period is over. you might decide you like it and buy it. there's a few others to be found but unknown software comes with unknown risks. check things out before you install

if you connect to the internet threw a router the only reason you could need a software firewall is for intrusion detection. to see what your computer is sending out and make sure it doesn't come from spyware/trojans/viruses etc.

Erm, there are better tools to use for intrusion detection than most personal firewalls. Most are free and have free resources on the net to teach you to use them (I know you know this Tedob1, I just have to put the argument out for everyone else).

Besides, nothing wrong with having personal firewalls set up on the machines in your internal network, if properly configured you may be able to keep yourself from getting the worm that your wife/kids were hit with on their machine.

Part of the firewall testing methodology I was going to explain later (if asked) includes using some basic snort and tcpdump/windump to ensure that the traffic that isn't supposed to make it through the firewall doesn't. Maybe I should do a quickie tutorial just for fun. =p