Only trust my frens, here. I thought using a VPN would mask one's actual location and ip address. But there are some sights that recognize my account with them whether or not I am using a vpn. Can someone explain? Thanks.
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The tor aspect will slow you down, but like I said, this approach is for full stealth.
If you just want to fly under the radar you can forgo that part and keep the performance.
When you really learn your stuff, you can use bitcoin to hire servers anonymously and run your own vpn gateway, that way you can be sure there are no logs.
I know someone who does all that and actually daisy chains three vpn servers, but that's for the seriously paranoid.
I've also tried explaining to him that it's like painting a big sign saying 'high value stuff worth your time to crack' for 5eyes.
Doing normal stuff and dampening the signal allows you to blend with the massive volumes of traffic, which in a way is more invisible. If they spot you they will have no trouble tapping your line, but it's less likely to make you visible in the first place.
His way might be a lot more challenging to crack, but they might think it's worthwhile expending the energy because he's spent so much energy in trying to hide his tracks if you know what I mean.
Still, he's good, but he only needs to screw up once.
Yeah, what you said makes sense. It's like a big neon sign saying, "Don't look here - but look here." Lol. It might help with some things though, I suppose.
Alright, I appreciate all you've said and the time you've taken - just one more question if I may. Where do you suggest a completely non-techie person go for some good, very basic level training to bone up on this stuff? Like you said, I should educate myself but I'm not sure where to start or where to look for training. Thanks.
Best way is to break it down into pieces.
Start off by looking for a general guide, search for something like 'how to stay anonymous online'.
Then, take each element and research it on its own (search for 'faq' as well - frequently asked questions).
You will build up your knowledge in layers. When you come across something you don't understand, make a note of it and come back to it later.
It will feel confusing at the outset, there is a lot of jargon to overcome (so research common jargon etc.) but that's totally normal. As you grasp one aspect, it will provide a key to understand more of another aspect, and so on.
Just an fyi, I've been in IT Security since '95 and I still keep a personal glossary of terms that I keep updating as something new comes along.
One hard aspect is that the same 'thing' has its terminolgy changed over time, just be aware that the thing that is confusing you might be something you understand already, just under a different name.
For example, 'cloud computing' was once called 'someone else's server' :)
Alright, good advice. Thanks again.
You're welcome