Helloo and greetings to everyone,

I would really appreciate some assistance on the following issue:

Can you give me a hint of How can I effectivelly Hide my i.p. address under Mandriva/Firefox while browsing and sending e-mail.



Thank you.[size="3"][/size]

Generally any computer you connect to, be it on a LAN or WAN(including the internet), needs your IP address to identify your machine on the network and form the connection. The only way to hide it is by using a proxy server, I do not believe that an application could hide it.

TOR?

http://www.torproject.org/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275

You can achieve this by using the app tor. It's available in the repos. You'll need tor, privoxy & tork (this is a frontend to control tor). There's only one file you initially need to configure and that's the /etc/privoxy/config file.

You can use Tor, but it's a little bit of effort.

Why would you want to 'hide' it in the first place?

Yes I downloaded TOR but cannot start it - there are no instructions, hence nothing changes.
Could you advise me how to start the program.

Why hide I.P.?
And Why not?

I guard my self against bad unhealthy interests besides It is absolutely normal to hide IP address like concealing any other personal information from the third parties.

* You close your door so that nobody can come into your residence.
* You hide your mobile phone number if you want so. Millions of people do it. So why not?

You can either start it from the services section in the Mandriva Control Centre or do a Reboot and it will start automatically. Both tor and privoxy need to be running. Did you make the advised changes in the /etc/privoxy/config file? You really need to make those changes before using it.

In some countries e. g. Germany it might be a good idea to hide as much as possible what you are doing on the web (we are going to get some really weird laws here lately).

If the government wants to find out your IP address, chances are nothing short of unplugging your computer and never getting online again will stop them.

First Thank you for your advices.

Now I used the link "ac_dispatcher" gave above and now a red character message appeared in my down- right corner of Firefox which states "Tor disabled" wken I click on it it changes green however then I cannot open any page because I get a message "Proxy refuses connection"

Can you pls explain me , step by step, how to do the advised changes in the /etc/privoxy/config file siince I am new at programming.

.....Nice signature...

Yes that is right, but at least we should not make life to easy for them .

TOR isn't absolutely sure anyway, because the exit notes can be targeted, there is always one point, where you or your proxy or exit node needs to show their IP-Adress, it was just an explanation why someone might want to hide something (his IP-Adress in this case).

Sorry reply has taken so long, I had to go out. Right, I'll list the steps so you can follow.

1. Press Alt & F2

2. Type: kdesu kwrite /etc/privoxy/config (or copy and paste that in) and click run.

3. Enter your root password and click ok. Now you are working as root so you need to be careful and avoid making any mistakes.

Going from the top, find this sentence:

# Long lines can be continued on the next line by using a `\' as the
# last character.
#
Make a blank line here and add this to that blank line exactly as I have written it: forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .

It should look like this if done correctly:

# Long lines can be continued on the next line by using a `\' as the
# last character.
#
forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
#
#
# 1. LOCAL SET-UP DOCUMENTATION

Now find this section:

# 2.6. logfile
#
# Specifies:
#
# The log file to use

Continue to scroll down and make sure you see this entry: #logfile logfile as long as it looks like that you don't need to do anything, if it doesn't have the # at the beginning, put one there.

Next continue to scroll down and you should see this entry: #jarfile jarfile again if it looks like this then you don't need to do anything.

The final thing to do is at this section:

#debug 1 # log each request destination (and the crunch reason if Privoxy intercepted the request)
#debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings
#debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors

Change it to look like this:

#debug 1 # log each request destination (and the crunch reason if Privoxy intercepted the request)
debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings
debug 8192 # Non-fatal errors

Now save and close the file. Either restart privoxy from the services section in the Mandriva Control Centre or reboot.

Make sure your torbutton is coloured green, now you're good to go.

Oh and to confirm your ip has been masked, check it at one of the many sites that show you your ip.

SOMETHING IS WRONG!


aFTER i LOGIN AS ROOT AND CLICK RUN Mandriva opens window/application KWrite - config -Kwrite which is absolutely empty , blank - - no text, no sentences .


What to do??

If you log in as root then don't bother with kdesu at the beginning of that command. If it comes back blank again, are you sure you have privoxy installed?

It's not really. An IP address isn't anything personal or special. Most people will have dynamic IP addresses, changing, so it's certainly not like a mobile phone number. You'll have a dynamic IP too.

Why not? Cause you can't! TOR doesn't really hide your IP address. You've still got one, and need one to connect to the internet. You get it from your ISP. So if the government for example ever want's to know your IP address, all they need to do is ask your ISP (depending on countries laws). Easy!

TOR is also often blocked. Many sites wont permit TOR connections, and many email servers will flat out reject TOR as TOR is often abused to send spam. So you may find that you won't be able to send your email over tor... starting to defeat the point of setting it up, isnt it.

So you can feel fuzzy wuzzy if you want. But it doesn't make a difference.

James

You and "tyme" seem to be very concerned about that issue. No , I donnot want to engage in any anti-governmental activity, However in my country there are other people who maybe interested in my I.P. and have no legitimate right to do so.!
That's why I prefer to hide it.
Also I don't think IP's are so dynamic as you say. Mine changes only once a year or even less.

If there are people who want your IP AND have the capabilities of exploiting you, then they won't have much trouble getting your IP whether you use TOR or not.

Once a year is pretty good for an IP for an dsl connection!

Sorry , I didn't ask for TOR I asked for a way to effectively hide my I.P. under Linux.

I know multiple ways to do that under Windows but that programs do not work for Linux that was my question.

Of course I am not sure, I don't know even what it means........

First of all JOE_X!!! don't concern yourself with the opinions of others, you don't need to justify or explain why you want to surf anonymously. Be patient a while longer, when I get home I will see how I can simplify my instructions.

There is no problem using tor to: Surf, Send Email or doing anything else www related.

iphitus is right in the sense that tor doesn't change your physical ip, what it does is anonimize your net activities by routing your requests through a series of proxies or nodes. To cut a long story short, when you request to see a page from a website when using tor, it is not your ip that is logged on that site as requesting the page, it is the ip of the exit node that is logged.

Privoxy is used to filter out any extra bits of info about your machine that in normal everyday use of the net gets sent out via your browser.

I find it strange how it's accepted that all and sundry is allowed to track your net movements/activities, but if you take exception to it and take steps to prevent it, you are somehow wanting to engage in something illegal. If the latter is true then governments are also doing something illegal because they also use tor.

But my main point was that you can't use TOR for everything. There are times when you'll need to work without it.


hehe. I never said that he wanted to engage in anything illegal, or even implied it. I just see this as paranoia.

True, it is ineffective with FTP for example. But for surfing, email, chat, irc it works fine. In the event I do come across a stubborn page/site, I simply change exit nodes.

lol. I know you didn't, but that is the usual assumption (in my experience) when the name tor is mentioned! One mans paranoia, is another mans right to privacy.

It seems that you could use something simpler. Give JAP a try

Sometimes their servers are stuffed, but usage is pretty straightforward- all you need is java installed.