Protecting My Privacy Help

[monsieurdozier]

I'm moved into school and once again I am worried about my privacy. I was hoping some of you might be able to help me.

Where I go to school, they believe that my computer is an extension of their network. They can read and look at anything that goes from my computer through their server and to the internet.

They love to read emails, often joking what my professors send out. I believe that I have a right to my privacy, so I want to be able to encrypt what I send and receive.

They also have Sonicwall, which prevents me from accessing certain websites. Newgrounds for example is banned for pornography reasons. While there is porn on Newgrounds, it is only a small fraction of the site. I would love to be able to access these sites as well.

I actually run Tor occassionally on my computer connection at home, but it doesn't want to work at all through this system. And internet proxy sites like, http://www.ninjaproxy.com work to let me access "Forbidden Sites", but are incredibly slow because of the number of people using them.

While I do have a Ubuntu machine, it is only a PIII, and incredibly slow on the internet. If there are programs that will work for Linux, that would be fine I can tolerate it, but I am mainly looking for some that would work for XP on my main PC.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Monsieur Dozier.

[bigfox]

to protect your email privacy, you can use Gmail and login only under the https site.

https://gmail.com will do it. You must be careful to specify HTTPS not HTTP

This will encrypt all traffic between your computer and gmail.

This works on all operating systems.



Also, if you want to learn more about network security and privacy, check out the Security Now pod cast.
Steve Gibson knows what he is talking about.
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm

Episode 10 Open Wireless Access Points may have the most relevant information for your needs.

If they are blocking tor, then you might be stuck with proxy's Make sure they are encrypted through ssh or they would be useless to prevent snooping.

You may have tor configured improperly. Read the instructions on tor.eff.org carefully for your operating system.

[BobCFC]

to protect your email privacy, you can use Gmail and login only under the https site.

https://gmail.com will do it. You must be careful to specify HTTPS not HTTP

This will encrypt all traffic between your computer and gmail.

This works on all operating systems.

.



By default GMAIL only enforces HTTPS for login and the main inbox is just undencrypted HTTP. There is a small firefox plugin called CustomizeGoogle (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743) which allows you to set hidden preferences such as hide adds in GMAIL.. one of these options is to forece gmail to use HTTPS for all connections.

[Andrewie]

I'm moved into school and once again I am worried about my privacy. I was hoping some of you might be able to help me.

Where I go to school, they believe that my computer is an extension of their network. They can read and look at anything that goes from my computer through their server and to the internet.

They love to read emails, often joking what my professors send out. I believe that I have a right to my privacy, so I want to be able to encrypt what I send and receive.

They also have Sonicwall, which prevents me from accessing certain websites. Newgrounds for example is banned for pornography reasons. While there is porn on Newgrounds, it is only a small fraction of the site. I would love to be able to access these sites as well.

I actually run Tor occassionally on my computer connection at home, but it doesn't want to work at all through this system. And internet proxy sites like, http://www.ninjaproxy.com work to let me access "Forbidden Sites", but are incredibly slow because of the number of people using them.

While I do have a Ubuntu machine, it is only a PIII, and incredibly slow on the internet. If there are programs that will work for Linux, that would be fine I can tolerate it, but I am mainly looking for some that would work for XP on my main PC.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Monsieur Dozier.

call the police or something, they shouldn't be able to read your emails. If your at College or University they shouldn't be filtering out your porn.