The theory of anonymity in the modern network

The modern network brings us freedom of speech, or rather, the ability to freely say what you want, without carrying an answer for it. It is believed that finding a network person in real life is problematic, especially since he took measures for his anonymity, and that only specials. IP services can determine your full name and passport data;) We all happened in situations, either watched them, or at least heard someone send a network of 3 letters on the network, in response they were promised to calculate the IP and find it, break legs and so forth.

One of my friends, the owner of a network of online stores, is constantly having fun searching for his clients on VKontakte and so on. He trades large, expensive gizmos. And knowing his clients “in person” for him is not only entertainment, but also a way to approach the client more flexibly.

I recently connected to a single media project, as a network analyst, and immediately received a task to find the creator and lead project putinvzrivaetdoma.org . It took quite a bit of time to identify the person.
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Let's try to analyze a few specific examples and try to reflect on the topic of anonymity on the web.

“I will calculate the IP, find the address, break my legs ...”

Who was born before 1990, probably remembers this period of chat in the network. When it was very fun to connect through a proxy, bypass thereby bans and so forth. Since then, we went to stories about "calculate IP, find out the address, break legs." Someone was afraid of this, someone was not afraid, someone did not understand what it was about. And the one who thinks faster, understands that these are bikes and nothing more. Well, how, even knowing IP, define a person? In fact, everything is simple, even elementary. At one time, someone actively troll my friend who was not very knowledgeable about network technologies. Sra Kakal him in the mail, trolls in the local chat and even broke his page on the people. A week later we identified him. We, however, very lucky. These were the times of actively developing home local networks. Networks have not yet been monopolized, there were many of them and they divided areas of the city. And also it was the time of the first counter-strike. I fished his IP from the post office and the people, well, a banal joke with a picture, when during the next trolling chat, a friend sent him a link to the picture that I had on the server. Established the area, hanging out a couple of days in a local gaming club. A couple of games in q3 and cs and people already cheerfully told what kind of a cool he is.
As for the specials. services, then in fact the instantaneous determination by IP of a person’s location is also a myth. All that they can, knowing IP and time of activity, make official requests to providers. And then, if I am not mistaken, the provider satisfies such requests only if there is a case.
It would seem that these times are gone? There is no dial-up, but mobile providers have arrived. Opsos, yota, cafe networks and more. In fact, nothing has changed. There are fewer networks, but for most wired networks, the IP ranges are still broken down by districts. And getting IP in general has ceased to be a problem at current prices for hosting. It is enough to place somewhere, for example in this post, a picture from your server and check the time in the logs and the time of adding comments. Another thing is that the network itself has become a bit more adequate, I think.

A standard solution to such “problems” is traditionally considered to be the use of proxy servers. But who had experience, even with paid proksyam, knows how much all this is not stable and slow. For myself, I discovered anonymous VPN a long time ago. Convenient, comfortable and, most importantly in the modern "world", quickly.
By the way, offtopic, but also interesting. At one time, when there was no money for VPN and so on, I was raising a sox proxy that did not log and was sitting through it. This is more to protect against special services. If all of a sudden there is a mess and sleeping, then you make a stupid, uncomprehending form, you give the computer, and the examination shows that the terminal is infected with a proxy that does not keep logs. Well, about any pgp, truecrypt and usbflash will not tell)
However, anonymous VPN and “interesting” info under truecrypt is far from a panacea for anonymity. Perhaps this will allow you to stay longer "physically" inaccessible, although it all depends on your human factor.

For example, once I fell in love. I think everyone has happened. Maybe loudly said, rather just sympathy, in general, is not the point. The girl in the bank, a manager, issued me a debit card. I knew only her name, but the department where I was was small. The goal was to get her cell. I was very surprised when I learned that there was no external telephone in the department. In general, this bank had only one incoming number and did not want to associate me with a specific branch. I called back, introduced myself to the delivery service of such a company, that delivery to such an address to a branch of your bank, you need to clarify the information. They are transferring to my department, I introduce myself as a courier, I ask for the cherished name on the phone. Again, lucky, the girl with that name in the department was alone. He introduced himself as a courier, said an order for flower delivery, asked for a personal cell phone in case I (the courier) would be late. Well, I ordered flowers, respectively, with delivery on the same day. I do not claim to be unique, Kevin can tell a lot more and more interesting stories. I just say that what we all neglect, sometimes works against us.
A friend of mine said that there is a way to not talk too much - to inspire yourself that you are always “listened”. On the other hand, do we need such paranoia?

Social networks as a means of identification

When VKontakte was still not a big network, did not make money at all, had neither video nor audio anything like that, they earned on headhunters. The recruiting personnel recruiter gladly paid money to find out about all the possible candidates about his possible candidate. Do they mention drugs in correspondence, is he who he claims to be. Was compiled by soc. portrait and decision was made.
Internet business and the approach to the client in general is a separate topic for conversation. In the network there is a huge pile of material on how to make your store more convenient and usable for the customer. How to attract him to shopping, how to keep him and push for the next purchase. But not many stores pay the necessary attention to the uniqueness of the client.
Here, for example, is a great idea for a shop of trinkets, gifts, and other petty bullshit. After placing the order, the person is searched in the social. network, are all his friends, their written off DR and stuff. And the client eventually receives email notifications, such as “Your friend Dmitry Ivanov will have a birthday after a week, we recommend giving the following items to his 25th anniversary.”
It is clear that this can be regarded as spam and it will only make the users angry)) but not all. And such a “service” will do its job.
And what, for example, is the search for people through "My World"? Generally wonderful service. Knowing the mail of a person, if it is in the domain of soap, most often you can see it, and find out when it was born and collect other information. Up to "online" status.

Well, you should pay tribute to search engines, bots, articles on the web, all web archives and so forth. That would seem ... One of the first contact accounts, Vyacheslav. A seemingly ordinary guy, for most of us. Those who are in the subject, know that this is one of the main investors of the contact, the son of the famous St. Petersburg mafia, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili. By the way, doing social networks and investing in web projects is a much more pleasant thing, I think, so there is a respect. But the meaning does not change. Even if you think that removing yourself from a contact or an article from the same habr, you protected yourself - you were mistaken.
Well, is it worth saying that having your profiles in networks is not difficult to compose your social network? portrait. Next, a little social engineering and voila.
Again, there is no cure for it. Everyone for himself determines the degree of "closeness." Someone changes the name and age, but someone does not hesitate to leave their cell phone contacts. It is worth remembering that everything can be used against. Coke sales are best discussed on Skype;))

putinzvryvaet home.org

Dear people, I was invited to a relatively large media project as an analyst. An absentee task was to understand who is behind the project putinvzrivaetdoma.org and who controls it.
The first thing I did was breaking through the whois information, respectively.
Registrant Name:Helga Putana
Registrant Street1:Lenina street 10, ap. 29
Registrant City:Moscow
Registrant Phone:+7.49523498745
Registrant Email:brigadioeedr@gmail.com
A set of left info. However, a mail search gave a couple of results, referring to the Odessa forum. And in the process of recovering the password from the mail, I learned that the auxiliary mailbox has a 3 letter domain in the “.net” zone, the domain starts with “u” (the domain of supposedly free Ukrainian mail, 3 vertically, starts with “u” ... ukr.net). And that phone ends at "42".

Interesting, but pointless for now ... We look at which domains are hosted on the same IP, there are not many of them, one of them is “a.anon.fm”. We punch this domain and see this
Registrant:
Name: Pavel Zhovner
Address:
10 Lenina str.
Apt. 1
Odessa 68001
UA
Phone Number: +380.986506942
We confirm Odessa, we see a similar address to the one in the past domain, and we confirm the telephone.
However, Google (registrar name request) indicates that we were mistaken from the very beginning. It was enough just to look for info about the domain in Google, we would immediately find the habrechelo zhovner , the creator and presenter.
Again, caching systems come to the rescue. Pavel decided to delete his post on Habré, in which he told how he had fun calling the FSB about his domain. But parsers don't sleep .
Helped the guys whose site they “felled”, repulsed the attack. The client calmed down, having learned that it was not a zakazuh, but a “fun party”, everyone is happy.

By the way, a couple of words about the project putincontaminated. The idea is great) unless the implementation pumped up. The point is simple. By accessing the site and pressing the big red button, you have a frame that you don’t see. However, he makes a ton of requests to the objectionable site. I saw up to 300 people online, but the creator boasts that he has filled up the sites of the FSB, United Russia, Mikhailovsky studios and some others. And all would be nothing if not referer. In my case, I added a couple of lines to the web server config to ignore requests with the referrer of the project put back (free html hosting). If the respected zhovner learns to “clean” the refak when redirecting, the service will gain strength)

Diverted ...
In general, as I said, I do not claim to be unique. Everything described above was most likely already described by other people earlier. Once again I come to the conclusion that anonymity is a myth) I sat for 10 minutes, from my profile I found a lot of things about myself in the network), including what I wouldn’t want to make in public. But it is already hanging, damn it.
Who can any other stories and examples? Who uses what methods to achieve anonymity? Is it generally interesting for the habra people to get together and determine the status and criteria for anonymity? And whether all this is necessary;))