Anonymizer rocks! (Re: Anonymity at any cost, from The Netly News)

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Mikhael Frieden <mikhaelf@mindspring.com>
> >Anonymity At Any Cost
> >by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
> 
> >        When Lance Cottrell created an easy-to-use anonymous e-mail service
> >	back in 1994, he feared that nobody would use it. "I used to be
> >	worried that people didn't want anonymity enough to pay for it,"
> >	he says. Today his company, Infonex, boasts 3,000 customers who
> >	pay $60 a year to browse the Web without leaving behind digital
> >	footprints. 
> 
>         Making the cookie read only and erasing previous additions does the
> same thing for free. Cottrell is PT Barnum speaking. 

That's no where near what the anonymizer does for you.

For $60 Lance gives a years use of an SSL connection to an anonymizing
web proxy.  That means as well as stripping out the cookies, browser
type, and other identifying info -- it means that your IP# isn't even
listed, and what's more passive snoops (eg snoopy Feds) of net traffic
into and out of infonex might have a bit of problem figuring out who
was accessing what under the cover of SSL.  

(Modulo traffic analysis -- web traffic is patchy, pauses in transfer
will show through the SSL layer, so you would probably be better off
browsing the dodgy stuff at peak web usage times, for the cover
traffic.)

I think Lance's success with this is tremendously good for privacy,
and it is also a positive to see that some people do care enough about
privacy to pay for it.

Adam
-- 
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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