Setting up a VPN, Securing Computer?

[Bryant.GhostInTheMachine]

Kevdog, you're awesome.

On that note, could you perchance explain, step-by-step, how to go about each of the layers of this privacy onion? Or, barring that, point me to a tutorial on each of the necessary set-up processes?

Also, will your proposed setup function well with a mail server running alongside? And, if so, how should I modify the component programs of the mail server in order to integrate with the privacy system?

[Bryant.GhostInTheMachine]

One other note: to connect the laptop (which is something of a living fossil) to the 'net will require a wireless router modded to act as a wireless bridge. As of now I have tried half a million times to flash it to DD-WRT or something of that ilk, but I have been woefully unsuccessful. Which sucks.

Assuming I CAN get the router (and, by extension, this entire server system thingamajig) working, are there any special modifications I have to make in that regard? (i.e. port forwarding, etc.)

[kevdog]

ddwrt comes in a few varieties, micro, mini, standard, vpn. Make sure your router is compatible and that there is enough RAM on your router for your version. I'm not sure what you want to do with your router, but unless your running anything complex, I've only found running a vpn on the router to be useful, however this could by supplemented by running a vpn server on one of the computers on the LAN -- I like ddwrt since its faster, but it works as well on a stand-a-lone box. As far as port forwarding, this could be done on any standard router. iptables could directly be implemented on the ddwrt router itself, but it could also be done on the LAN computer.

[abexman]

Question: a VPN I assume encrypts all your data so your ISP can't easily see what you are doing and destination sites don't know where you are coming from? Does that look suspicious to the ISP?

On a related question - as to browser fingerprinting. I assume this would primarily be an issue if an agent had logs of traffic (say from an ISP from a user who wasn't using a VPN or a website or group of sites), of users who were trying to be anonymous, and you could use the fingerprint to match more than one user session together to attempt to collect identifying data? The fact that your browser can be identified to be unique, is in and of itself not much of a concern since that browser id data can only be seen by certain parties along the route of your connection. A VPN can help by reducing some of the exposure in that regard.

[Welly Wu]

If you plan to connect to outside websites, then the easiest solution is to pay money to subscribe to a VPN service provider. It will create an encrypted tunnel between your PC and your ISP and route all traffic through that encrypted tunnel. Since you are using Ubuntu or GNU/Linux, then you have to find a VPN service provider that offers support for your platform. WiTopia VPN http://www.witopia.net does so. It costs $72.00 USD annually for Personal VPN PRO plan and it's worth it. You can connect up to two Internet devices to WiTopia VPN gateways worldwide at the same time in different countries.

This also allows you to connect to WiTopia VPN gateways from any ISP in any location worldwide whereas a private VPN server at home means that you have to make sure that you can connect to your home ISP. This is what makes WiTopia Personal VPN PRO service so valuable.

I use it myself and my friend shares a connection with me.

[rookcifer]

Now on to Tor. Tor is not really as anonymous as people would like to think. For one the exit router is a huge concern the exit router in the Tor network has access to whatever data is sent unencrypted. The intermediate routers do not, they only get the encrypted data. It is because of this that Tor is weak one for data protection

All of this I agree with. Tor is an anonymity network and not a data integrity or privacy network. There is a difference in privacy and anonymity.

and two because it makes end to end corellation very easy.

This I do not agree with. While there have been some academic attacks on Tor, I am aware of very few that have been demonstrated practically. Thus I would have to disagree that end-to-end correlation is "very easy." Doable by a national intelligence service maybe, but probably not by many others.

Particularly because most likely your DNS lookups are not being proxied.

That's only if you have misconfigured Tor. It is fully capable of routing DNS through the network. Indeed, this is why they now endorse the Tor browser bundle -- it is ready to go out of the box with all of the configuration done for you.