New to privacy software, looking for opinions

I have little experience with privacy software other than tor/vidalia. I had problems with vidalia/tor/privoxy (bundle package) because it was too slow. It is also a challenge to uninstall when I did (I had to go into the registry and some other things to get it off my computer).

So, what I am looking for is something that will allow me to surf anonymously from my ISP and other people. My ISP is a college (one I attend). The college recently sent out an email saying the RIAA was suing 12 students for illegal music downloading. So I'm guessing either the ISP ratted them out, or the RIAA just picked up there ISP from some download place they set up.

I also have an account to demonoid, and would like to be able to download large files anonymously too. I haven't used the account at my college at all, and don't trust Tor with it due to its small bandwidth.

So, long story short, does anyone have any recommendations for me? Again, I'm mainly looking to be able to surf the net anonymously from my ISP (college) and still have a fast connection. I would also like to keep other prying eyes out as well.

I would prefer the service be free (I'm a college student). Thanks for any recommendations and advice.

 

For what you are trying to do, I would currently recommend SecureTunnel, and if you can't do that, Relakks or SwissVPN.

 

Is there any that are free of charge that would meet my needs (or at least some of them), instead of the commercial services? Understandably, you get what you pay for (which would explain why Tor is so slow). But there must be another service out there that is faster like Tor. For example, is there a way to select which host server I go to in Tor/Vidalia? When I used it, I was unable to select a host, and therefor got the slower servers.

Also, I'm located in the US. I noticed one of the sites used Euros.

 

No. These are the cheapest you will find, and Tor is the only free network out there with any reliability, which is low.

If you have a machine you are willing to use at some other location, you could set up a proxy on that machine, and go from your machine, to that machine, to the internet.

 

Regarding price:

You won't find robust free services. This is because the internet was designed with the view that everyone wants to be found, there really no way to become anonymous unless you route your traffic through a VPN or SSL to a third party and have them handle all the request. That bandwidth for them to retrieve then send to you costs money. They also need to pay for infrastructure. So unfortunately, to provide this service, bandwidth and some infrastructure costs will be charged to you with a margin on top.

Regarding legal issues:

The RIAA's campaign is high profile but not high impact. It plays on peoples fears. In reality, a very small proportion of people even selected and the worst that can happen to you is that you settle for 3k. That means less beer money but at least you saved on the free music and movies right?

Another legal issue is whether penalties are different for unlawful possession of copyrighted material and unlawfully obtaining copyrighted material. If it is more severe to possess, I suggest you an encryption program like Truecrypt and download straight to the encrypted drive/container.

 

the only other network simplier to TOR is JAP, but the free services only include 1 to 2 hop proxies, and are generally quite good for web browsing. JAP also has premium servers but you have to pay for that.

the problem you will face is that most privacy services dislike p2p as it brings too much heat for such a small problem. As steve suggested use Relakks or swissvpn for p2p needs, or use BTguard through i have no experience with them.

 

Tor/Vidalia only add one entry each to the registry - their uninstall keys at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. Privoxy adds a few more (4 file associations in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes plus the uninstall entry) but again nothing that should cause problems. Did you by any chance run an overly aggressive registry cleaner that may have deleted the uninstall keys?

As others have noted, "fast" and "free" are mutually exclusive when it comes to online anonymity. Bandwidth costs, which limits what volunteer-operated services like JAP and Tor can offer - if you want P2P anonymity then it will be a case of deciding which commercial service to go for.

This question has been raised before so checking previous threads like Now how to choose a VPN / anonymizer service ? may provide a few more suggestions.

 

Give www.torrentfreedom.com a try, it's $17.00 a month and heavily encryted with key being changed every 20 minutes. It works well.