Countries for Anonymous Internet

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by SteveTX, May 2, 2009.

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  1. SteveTX

    SteveTX Registered Member

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    I'm interested to find out what the general population thinks, and why, so please indulge me and share your thoughts.

    1. Those of you who use anonymization and privacy services, does it matter where the proxy node location is?
    2. Why do you think that country location matters? What has made you think that response?
    3. What countries do you like, and which would you avoid, and why?

    There is no wrong answer.
     
    Last edited: May 2, 2009
  2. whoarestinkler

    whoarestinkler Registered Member

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    1)Its important
    2)Because of its LAWS
    3)Like: NL,EST. Disloke: US,DE. Why? Their LAWS. Thats why I avoid of use-VPN services located in these countries. Fo ex. our VPN -provider tells that no logs keeped in their VPN server. Ok. But a-provider keeps all logs...
     
  3. Taliscicero

    Taliscicero Registered Member

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    Like: Netherlands, Luxemburg, China, Russia, Japan, Mexico.

    Don't like: US, UK, Switzerland.

    -~~

    Like Because: Good privacy laws, No Jurisdiction in my country.

    Don't like Because: Bad privacy laws, Data mineing, Marketing.


    Pretty much sums it up.
     
  4. fuzzylogic

    fuzzylogic Registered Member

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    1) Yes and No, No, as sometimes a proxy can be used to access local content, ie Hulu in the US, Yes as some countries don't provide any privacy/anonymity value.
    2) Its important as good countries provide solid laws for privacy and they usually have good laws protecting freedom of information. I come to that conclusion from just reading up on the issues.
    3) Good countries, you've got two already Canada and the Netherlands, love to see some nodes in Luxemberg, Ukraine, Malaysia for privacy sake, UK for the BBC, ah good British comedy. Or some nodes that are just out of the way and would be cool to have ie Afician nodes, Estonia, South Aficia etc or Pacific nodes, New Zealand, Indonesia, for making feel more 007 lol.
     
  5. AnonG

    AnonG Registered Member

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    3. :thumb: : Luxembourg, Japan, Hong Kong, Netherlands. Small locales with language barriers and better than average privacy laws to discourage superficial expeditions to gather user information. All of them have very good connectivity unlike some more exotic but possibly unstable countries such as Iceland and Latvia.

    :thumbd: UK. Might be the worst country in the world for individual privacy. Beats the US by a mile. France, Russia, Finland, Sweden - all heavy with logging and police usually simply need to make a call to receive user information, not even subpoenas needed in many cases. Italy: you need to present an ID to surf at a web cafe. If cafe owners are required to keep IDs on file a proxy refusing to log wouldn't last long.
     
  6. blatnoy

    blatnoy Registered Member

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    1/ Yes
    2/ Laws, Country Infrastructure, Data Mining etc
    3/ Like: Tokyo,Malaysia, Middle Eastern Countries UAE Morrocco , Ukraine Estonia

    Dislike: Israel,Germany,France,Russia etc
     
  7. Taliscicero

    Taliscicero Registered Member

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    Germany o_O

    From what i know they have good privacy laws.
     
  8. blatnoy

    blatnoy Registered Member

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    From what I've read on here, Steve from Xerobank says a server was raided in Germany. Cyberghost the free VPN also is hosted in Germany and they have always seemed a tad fishy to me but maybe I am paranoid. Also there is this

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks#Police_raid_on_German_Wikileaks_domain_owner.27s_home

    and this http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/


    FTA "When the FBI tried to track him down from his visits to the web page, they found he was routing through a German-based anonymizer. The FBI obtained a warrant to use the CIPAV on Feb. 10, 2005, and was apparently successful. Kelly went on to plead guilty to extortion, and was sentenced to five years probation."


    I dunno just my 2 cent.
     
    Last edited: May 2, 2009
  9. fuzzylogic

    fuzzylogic Registered Member

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    Once upon a time, yes germany was the place to be for good privacy laws. Now not so good, they are taking the data retention laws way above what is required and are logging more than just internet, including phone calls, emails, etc.

    Tor developers were even concerned about these extreme data retention laws, through 1/3 of the network is located in germany.
     
  10. snowdrift

    snowdrift Registered Member

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    Please choose those countries exercising as little (or no) govt. oversight as possible.
     
    Last edited: May 4, 2009
  11. arran

    arran Registered Member

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    Personally I prefer a country where they would never give away any logs to the
    the US authorities or my home country NZ. So it would be a country where the US doesn't have any diplomatic relations with, some where like North Korea, Iran or a server in Russia run by the Russian Mafia or Russian Business Network, there's no way that they would ever hand over any logs. That's if they did keep such logs that is.
     
  12. arran

    arran Registered Member

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    I would take New Zealand off your list, I'm From New Zealand. and our internet is monitored to a certain degree, I know people who work at ISP's who are always watching what traffic is going in and out. the authorities here have close relations with Australia, UK, US and Brazil in terms with dealing with cyber crime. So you wouldn't get much privacy here.

    Not only that due to the fact that we only have 1 International pipe going from NZ to California in the US, hosting is very expensive. .
     
  13. SteveTX

    SteveTX Registered Member

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    Interesting responses, guys. Btw, we got a quote about servers in Iceland. Bandwidth costs $35/GB, one way. If we added it as a exit node, the price rises to $140/GB since traffic in -> (iceland) -> traffic to destination -> destination to iceland -> (iceland) -> traffic out. If you selected Iceland you would deplete your entire bandwidth balance in 500 Megabytes or 1 day of surfing. :(
     
  14. Arios

    Arios Registered Member

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    china and russia? i might be wrong but i thought they were among the worst offenders, definitely china at least.
     
  15. LockBox

    LockBox Registered Member

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    I thought the same thing and you're right. At least about China, I don't think filtering is a problem in Russia. Why would anybody want a VPN through China who has some of the worst Internet filtering in the world? People are trying to get around the Great Firewall of China, not put themselves in the middle of it.
     
  16. arran

    arran Registered Member

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    Since when is the internet in Russia Filtered?
     
  17. LockBox

    LockBox Registered Member

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    It's not, that's what I said in the post above. Maybe you were asking this of Arios.
     
  18. arran

    arran Registered Member

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    Yea I was asking Arios.

    You know a lot of businesses including ISP's in Russia are actually run by the
    Mafia and RBN, hence why most of the Malware, Hackers and CP on the net originate from Russia. They wouldn't even bother about keeping logs, and they don't give a shitt what you would use their servers for. Their only interest is doing business and making money.

    That Said, I don't condone illegal activities but in terms of Privacy it would be they place to go.
     
  19. Wintermute

    Wintermute Registered Member

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    We HAD good privacy laws until second phase of data retention law has been established on January 1, 2009. Since then ISPs and anonymity service providers like JonDonym have to store connection data like ip addresses and such stuff for 6 months.
     
  20. Leonid

    Leonid Registered Member

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    Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Japan, Pakistan.

    What really matters is to choose the countries that are most likely out of reach for western intelligence agencies. So, even if they see you are exiting there, what can they do? Most likely nothing. Unless maybe if you are distributing child pornography, or are involved in terrorism activities.

    You would be very wrong if you assume that internet isn't well developed in most locations I mentioned above (Iran & Venezuela included). Not all of them are safe when it comes to possible takeover from western intelligence agencies, but most are very safe. Especially Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
     
  21. blatnoy

    blatnoy Registered Member

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    That is why I use VPN's operated and run by Russians. Most of them do not use servers in Russia. I think one of the biggest aspects to choosing a VPN is not where it the server is located(although that is important) but rather who it is operated by. You can have servers in Turks and Caicos or Somalia but if the VPN you are running is NSA or some other intelligence agency it doesn't matter. Here are a couple Russian Operated VPN's I know of. I use Secretsline and they are run by Russians. They have servers in Malaysia Estonia Luxemburg Germany Canada USA Netherlands UK and they just added a Server in Switzerland today.

    another couple Russian operated VPN's I know are
    http://www.vpn-service.us/ <- you can translate with google

    And thesafety.us <- This site is like Secretsline as it has a language choice for only Russian or English
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2009
  22. SteveTX

    SteveTX Registered Member

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    Russia has two IXs in the whole country. All internet traffic is centralized there, and it is monitored by both intelligence agencies and criminal orgs. Russia is neither safe nor private for single-hop VPN, or non-multiplexed VPN.
     
  23. arran

    arran Registered Member

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    I presume you mean two Main Internet Exchanges in the whole country.

    But their would be a whole lot of other ISP's branching off from the two main
    Internet Exchanges. So if you have a VPN server in one of the ISP's branching off, granted the main Internet Exchanges would see your traffic going in and out, but all your traffic would be "Encrypted"
     
  24. SteveTX

    SteveTX Registered Member

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    Encryption doesn't make a difference regarding anonymity, only privacy. They can follow the netflows right back to their source or their destination or both and deanonymize you, and if you spoke to the destination unencrypted, they have both your identity and your traffic.
     
  25. Bensec

    Bensec Registered Member

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    no they dont just filter content, they block and log down the event.
    as long as i know, in china the idc keep your log at least 1 week long. And for people who dont like laws, its truely the best place for them.
    because the authorities can ban your account or shut your idc down for any excuse. Laws are useless.
    If you run exit node in china, always cross your fingers and pray that your account or idc is not busted too fast.
    hate laws? welcome to china! enjoy our freedom ;)
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2009
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