How to Browse the Web and Leave No Trace

Yeah, that was my guess.

 

The best option seems to be to use a physical read/write switch that some pen drives have.

 

I tried to find you all links to some further information about the cd vs usb debate. I'm really not trying to be a dick about this I have been doing this a long time and I know what I am doing. Anyway, a little bit disconcerting, the tails website used to have a prominant section on the pros and cons of cd or usb stick where they made it clear the cd is more secure and why. This information appears to have been removed. I did find an article on linuxmagazine.com where the authore advises to read that section (which is no longer there) before deciding.
I could not find any other article about tails that even mentioned the security consideration and every one of them steers the reader towards the usb stick option by focusing on it while only giving the cd option a passing mention.
be careful out there.

 

Unless you can rule out that a tech company definitely WON'T go over to the bad side, it is better to not to trust them, ESPECIALLY the M$'s etc. I certainly wouldn't rule out even smaller companies purposely designing things to keep in with govts. I agree with your reasoning that being physically impossible is the better choice.

I wonder if it's possible to load tails into RAM and remove the drive while browsing? Also I'm not that familiar with Linux so I'm not sure what you have to do to mount/unmount HDDs to write anything there as apposed to a persistent volumn on USB - and whether it matters if its a Windows OS HDD.

Edit: Didn't see your post RockLobster. You're not being a ******* . I think you make a lot of sense.

 

Thanks Reality I appreciate your comments. I think most of the problems we have is due to the fact the masses believe the machine with all their private data and applications should be connected to the internet. Its time for the people to tell MS, Google etc. The game is over, we did it your way, we trusted you and you screwed us. Now we'll use live OS online and keep everything else permanently offline.
Thats what I've been doing.
Who needs security updates and 25 antimalware apps when it's never online.
Who needs Windows 10. XP is just fine, offline.

 

The masses just willingly rolling over is all part of decades of conditioning, which have been necessary to get them like this. "They" the PTB want it like this for total control and I believe that's where things are heading VERY quickly. Seriously, but no one really wants to believe that even though it's plainly evident with each passing day. Even though I see it coming I certainly won't be laying down to it just the same.

The snooping, tracking and how ads play into that, is bad enough, but it's not all there is to this fiasco. It's about surveillance - and how do they get people to willingly accept that? one way is by telling them it's for their safety, of course, and other lies. If they start to wake up too much then they can just manufacture the next "incident". Nothing like a good trrst event to shake things up.

The more I think about it I reckon you're right about live OSes online. I know XP's days are numbered for online, not to mention hardware requirements.... and as for W10 NO THANKS! This cloud stuff gives me the creeps. Tails with v3 I think is only 64bit now. That means one of my computers is out, but I couldn't get it to boot the final tails anyway which is mentioned in their docos as a possibility for some systems, plus not all thumb drives work either.

Where possible I try and apply the default deny principle. In that light, if you CAN'T write to something in the first place, then it can't be compromised in that way. That definitely lessens the attack surface.

 

Reality, yes it it a conspiracy of epic proportions. We talk about surveillance and privacy on this forum but they are just a small part of the big picture.
Most can't or won't see what is going on. They probably can't believe our governments and corporations could be capable of such shockingly insideous, deceitful actions, that directly contradict everything we thought our society and democracy stood for. But they have and they are and it is called New World Order.

 

The NWO indeed - and even that is part of the bigger picture. The conspiracy (not theory) is absolutely massive. We have scores of people saying what it is but pitifully few asking the more important question of why it is. It's mostly operational now but they'll wait for the right time to bring in the final stage. Surveillance is a necessary and key player to help toward that end.

At wilders we can easily see evidence from linked articles of this escalating at a scary rate. When everyone is surveilled, privacy is lost. When that happens and people don't mind, something is very wrong.

From the time GeorgeW first publicly introduced those words it was on cue and no accident. The intent was for it to eventually become so common place the concept would be firmly planted into everyones head in the process. Once the conditioning process achieves critical mass, any hollering only helps their cause. That's EXACTLY what we've seen happening in the last decade or so. Over and over this same method (introducing catchphrases and changing the meaning of words) has worked to subtly and slowly change peoples thinking en mass. That people flock to places like FB is strong evidence we're there.

 

Reality. Yes I agree pitifully few. I think many are frightened to discuss it in public or even to think about it too hard. I actually am ashamed of my generation. In the future they are going to know we are the ones who let this happen.

 

It's totally possible to run tails from just RAM. No HDD needed (but of course CD-ROM drive).

For example, here tails running in VirtualBox without any HDD, just virtualized CD-ROM drive attached to tails live DVD iso and I gave it 8 GB for RAM.





Most Linux distros have some friendly GUI way of handling mounting/unmounting and most
automatically mount stuff when you attach USB.

In a cmd-line world you use command mount /dev/device_name_here /some_mount_point_here
and then umount /some_mount_point_here after done.

HDD names often are in form /dev/sdXY where X is the disk and Y is the partition so for example /dev/sda1 is first drive in your computer and it's first partition and /dev/sda2 it's second partition etc...
/dev/sdb1 second drive and it's first partition etc.....
and so on ...

so for example, let's say this example computer first drive first partition is C: drive in windows world and second partition is D: drive
you could do the following:

mkdir /mnt/{c,d} (do this only once, if directories /mnt/c and /mnt/d do not exists)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/c
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/d

cd /mnt/c
ls (shows what you got in drive C: )
cd /mnt/d
ls (ditto)

and if drive D: was really second drive first partition then the mount command would be:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/d

 

That is true, normal CD-ROM disks can't have their files changed no matter what.
Neither do common CD-R(W) and DVD-/+R(W) that users use to burn their linux distros
because ISO fileformat is by definition read-only.

However, there is a way to make all the above media (CD-R,CD-RW, DVD-R,DVD+R,DVD-RW,DVD+RW)
act like an old fashioned floppy disc where files can be individually changed/added/deleted.

You will need to have packet writing in your linux kernel either built-in or module,
and you have to use UDF filesystem.

And it does not hurt if you use DVD+RW disc, the only media of the above that has true random write access.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_writing
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/CD/DVD/BD_Writing#UDF
http://wikigentoo.ksiezyc.pl/HOWTO_Packet_Writing_on_CD-RW.htm