if you carefully read the documentation, you will see that you can put your tor traffic on port 80 which will lower your "footprint" against the usual methods used to detect tor usage. at that point, an adversary would need to use deep packet inspection to know for sure whether you are using tor or not. even better would be to use port 443 (https: ), and then your encrypted traffic would be more difficult to discern that it's tor traffic.

with the passage of legislation that allows ISP's to sell user data, i intend to use tor a lot more often for more mundane browsing. it's MY data.

If you are serious about anonymity you really ought to avoid using Tor from your home or any other place you consistently browse the web. This raises red flags.

Tor traffic can be used to identify you by discerning browsing habits. Another thing that can identify you is if you change your user agent to be something too strange. Those can set off red flags. So while you might think you are being sneaky, it can actually be what causes your traffic to be flagged for inspection.

The best way to achieve anonymity is to purchase a virtual private server with bitcoins. Preferably a server that is located in another country. Set up a VPN on it that connects and encrypts your traffic from home to the server. Then have all outgoing traffic sent out to Tor. Use the Tails live cd (https://tails.boum.org/) on your local machine. Do not go to high risk web sites. If you are connecting to your VPN from a public network you should spoof your MAC address.

Another thing that will help your anonymity is if you run a Tor relay on your home network. Or possibly on public networks you use. Your traffic can be confused with other Tor network traffic if you raise the amount of connections going in and out of this network. Anonymity through obfuscation.

Remember though. Tor does not encrypt your traffic once it leaves the Tor network. Anyone on the other end of your tor tunnel can see your traffic in plain text. So install a browser add on to force HTTPS. This will cause your browser to encrypt your traffic before it even enters the Tor network and when it leaves it will still be encrypted. Disable javascript and flash content as well.

I like to use these browser add ons on every browser I use, regardless of Tor usage:

- HTTPS Everywhere - https://www.eff.org/HTTPS-EVERYWHERE
- Privacy Badger - https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
- uBlock - https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock
- uBlock origin - https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

And depending on if I am using Chromium or Firefox:

- Scriptsafe - https://github.com/andryou/scriptsafe
- NoScript - https://noscript.net/

I suggest you also check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site. Great resource for information on how to protect your online digital rights.

- EFF - https://www.eff.org/

I forgot to mention how I deal with DNS leaks. I like to use Privoxy (https://www.privoxy.org/) for that.

While I am here, I should probably also mention ProxyChains (https://github.com/rofl0r/proxychains-ng/).

Proxychains + Tor + privoxy can be configured to open a new Tor circuit for every connection you make and force a set hop range. For a web browser this means every HTTP/HTTPS request a web site makes, Tor will open a new TCP socket. It can be configured to randomize as many Tor network hops you wish to make. It would take a great deal of packet inspection to identify someone using such a configuration from a VPS purchased with bitcoins. I have to warn though, this slows down web browsing speeds considerably due to all the overhead.

Privoxy and ProxyChains both have SlackBuilds available.

uBlock development has stopped (last commit was made on August 2015), the development continues under the name uBlock Origin (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock) and that's what you should use instead. Wikipedia article has an explanation on why there are two similarly named extensions.

Thanks for correcting me. I will update my post. I am using uBlock origin.

Hello Everyone,

@Skaendo Hey just wanted to let you know that the

dom.storage.default_quota -> 0 went back to the 5120 value not sure how.

All of the follow how went to back the to defaults.

browser.fixup.alternate.enabled
gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled
network.http.sendRefererHeader
network.cookie.cookieBehavior ->
*services.sync.prefs.sync.network.cookie.cookieBehavior ->
geo.wifi.uri
browser.geolocation.warning.infoURL

There are some other geo locations pointing to the default value so, i blank then in browser to see
if that stops the value from returning. I'll update if it does.

I'm not surprised. Honestly I don't use Firefox, but I wouldn't put it past them to make it revert somehow. I use Pale Moon and all my settings hold, I just checked them.

Another note; Firefox is completely revamping their code and going to be based on the "Quantum" engine that is going to be replacing the "Gecko" engine that they are currently running. This is also going to affect A LOT of addons and plugins since they are migrating towards "WebExtensions". I have been reading that quite a few addon developers are no longer going to be developing for Firefox, I have no idea which addons are going to be affected.

This is supposed to be completed around November 14th 2017 and Firefox v57 according to the Mozilla release schedule. So everything will need to be relearned. I have no time for this nonsense, this is not the first time that Mozilla has decided to alienate their 3rd party developers and their users.

I have moved on from Firefox. Pale Moon is 1000x faster and the devs listen to their users. Not to mention that there is less that I have to do to make Pale Moon work and look like I want it to.

Here is a unverified preview/mock up of Firefox 57 via ghacks.

Sorry about the ranting.

Here is some more info about Firefox roadmap: The Road to Firefox 57 – Compatibility Milestones

1 members found this post helpful.

@Skaendo Yeah but, won't that also effect all mozilla based browsers?

This is what i found on the internet about web extentions.

WebExtensions are a cross-browser system for developing browser add-ons. To a large extent the system is compatible with the extension API supported by Google Chrome and Opera. Extensions written for these browsers will in most cases run in Firefox or Microsoft Edge with just a few changes. The API is also fully compatible with multiprocess Firefox.

So does this mean that who ever makes a web extention is going to work on all browsers? If so what is the purpose of using firefox if they all have the same extentions?

The change is not going to affect Pale Moon as far as I know. As we all know Pale Moon is a Goanna based pre-Australis Firefox fork.

I don't know about the extensions or what the migration to "WebExtensions" entails. All I know is what I have read about it, and one addon developer said that he has been rewriting one of his adons for over a year to try and make it "WebExtension" compliant and it was a no go so he just said screw you Mozilla and is dumping all his addon projects. And there are a bunch more right behind him.

Here are a few other about:config settings you may want to look at;

browser.cache.disk.enable -> false
browser.cache.memory.enable -> flase
browser.display.use_document_fonts -> 0
browser.search.geoip.timeout -> 0
browser.search.geoip.url -> blank
browser.sessionhistory.max_entries -> 2

With all the election hacking, more and more focus is on internet privacy, creating a surge in new tor users, as well as more anonymous forward proxies, such that as these measures become the norm, using them will no longer be the "red flags" that they once may have been!

Hello Everyone,

@Skaendo I decide to try out pale moon 27.2.0. If you do a search in the about:config for useragent you will see a will see a bunch of entrys for usergent overrides. You might want to also disable

general.useragent.site_specific_override > false

Other wise you may think your using secret agent on those sites when your not.

In order for that setting to work, the site also has to be defined. I've attached a screenshot to elaborate on what I mean there. Every time you refresh a page go back and look at "useragent" in about:config. You'll see them spring to life and run through a bunch of random strings.

You might actually be defeating Secret Agent by setting that to false.

If you are in doubt, go to http://www.useragentstring.com/ and just hit refresh a few times. You'll see that your string is getting randomized every time you hit refresh.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Hello Skaendo,

I went to the site you mentioned. I also had set general.useragent.site_specific_override > false and in the site
it was still showing random browers. However i believe when you go to any of the sites that have the override set
it's not using the default useragent string and instead is using the override string thats why i mentioned it to you.

Look at the screenshot to see what i mean.
https://s2.postimg.org/kr3j6y989/screen06.png

Even when I test it like this;

general.useragent.site_specific_override > true
Go to google (since it one of the predefined overrides) and refresh, it changes in about:config from "default" to "user set" and a random string is generated.

I'm not worried about it.

But if it bothers you that much, you can blank out the predefined strings, and it will get randomized. I tried it with addons.mozilla.org

Honestly, I don't think it matters because I can go to anyone of those predefined sites and it gets randomized each time I refresh it. Even if it starts out as "default" and is defined.

(To tell the truth, I don't go to any of those predefined sites listed. I might go to google once a year so it doesn't bother me that much.)

EDIT: I do go to YouTube a couple times a week, and sometimes it tells me that I have a incompatible browser, so I know Secret Agent is working properly. YouTube is one of the predefined sites.