If her Internet activity is being logged (it almost certainly is all of our Internet activity is being logged), it would be easy to connect the dots. Juliet is logging into her Ceres account from the same IP address that she’s using for everything else on her computer (e.g. It’s still possible, and sometimes even trivial, to figure out that Ceres is actually Juliet and Eris is actually Romeo. ![]() Of course, just making up new usernames alone isn’t enough. ![]() When Juliet’s accounts are later audited for evidence of communicating with Romeo - her short-tempered cousin is a bit overbearing, to say the least - nothing incriminating will show up. Juliet chooses the username “Ceres,” and Romeo chooses the username “Eris.” Now when Ceres and Eris have an encrypted conversation it will be harder for attackers to realize that this is actually Juliet and Romeo. Juliet and Romeo decide to make new chat accounts. The trick is not to hide that they’re communicating at all, but rather that they’re Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet know that if they talk on the phone, exchange emails or Skype chats, or otherwise communicate using traditional means, there’s no way to hide from their powerful families the fact that they’re communicating. Meet Juliet, who is trying to get in touch with Romeo. Let’s take a quick look at how to do that. Likewise, if you’re a star-crossed lover hoping to connect with your romantic partner, and keep your feuding families from finding out about the hook-up, you need to protect not just the content of your love notes and steamy chats, but the very fact that you’re talking in the first place. When a source wants to communicate with a journalist, using encrypted email isn’t enough to protect the fact that they’re talking to a journalist. Metadata, like who is talking to whom, can be incredibly revealing. HTTPS will protect your message from potential snoops on your Wi-Fi network (like the teenager with Wireshark) or working for your telecom company, but not from the company on the other end of that connection, like Facebook or Google, nor from law enforcement or spy agencies requesting information from such companies.Ī second, bigger caveat is that it’s important to protect not only the content of your communications but also the metadata behind those communications. Contrast this with encryption that only covers your link to the service provider, like an HTTPS web connection. No one at any other point, including the company providing the communication service you’re using, can decrypt the message. With end-to-end encryption, a message gets encrypted at one endpoint, like a smartphone, and decrypted at the other endpoint, let’s say a laptop. ![]() One caveat is to make sure the encryption you’re using is the sort known as “end-to-end” encryption. ![]() Then, when you have time, come back and read the important caveats preceding those instructions. If you’re in a hurry, you can skip directly to where I explain, step by step, how to set this up for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Android. In a nutshell, I’ll show you how to create anonymous real-time chat accounts and how to chat over those accounts using an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record Messaging, or OTR. I’ll take techniques NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used when contacting me two and a half years ago and boil them down to the essentials. Today I’m going to explain in precise terms how to do that. Such private data might only be available to the service provider brokering your conversation, but it might also be visible to the telecom companies carrying your Internet packets, to spy and law enforcement agencies, and even to some nearby teenagers monitoring your Wi-Fi network with Wireshark.īut if you take careful steps to protect yourself, it’s possible to communicate online in a way that’s private, secret and anonymous. When you pick up the phone and call someone, or send a text message, or write an email, or send a Facebook message, or chat using Google Hangouts, other people find out what you’re saying, who you’re talking to, and where you’re located.
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