Thanks for posting this! Given recent events, this should probably be a sticky.
What are your thought on Tor?
Tor + VPN is probably about as good as most people can do. Check the details of the VPN though to make sure it works with Tor.
Just another bit of info on VPNs...
In case people are saying WTF is a VPN? It's a virtual private network. Oh great, much clearer. Okay, it's an encrypted tunnel from your device to a server on the Internet. Everything that gets transferred between those points cannot be spied upon. There are two types of VPNs, a device level VPN and a browser extension basically. If your browser has a built-in VPN, that means the traffic going from your BROWSER to that endpoint server online is all encrypted. If you have a device level VPN, like a standalone app that is separate from the browser, it will encrypt traffic going from the COMPUTER to that endpoint server online, which would also include the browser traffic. But it covers everything else leaving the computer as well. That's one of the reason I was using the Opera browser with it's built-in VPN and went with the ProtonVPN mentioned in the OP. The latter is a standalone app. Just something to consider.
A VPN is not 100% security though. Yes everything going from your computer to the VPN endpoint server is secure. But what about from there to the destination web site? Yep, it open again. So a VPN cannot protect your from yourself if you go to stupid web sites. So why even use a VPN then? Well, everything from you to the VPN endpoint will be hidden and that may be something that's important to you. Even your ISP that handles all your Internet access cannot see it. Or what if you are "in the wild" like at an airport WIFI hotspot or something like that? Then it's important because it secures the Internet entryway traffic.
Thanks Jake,
I'm a typical guy with limited knowledge about all this stuff you've been mentioning. So, a question or two if I may.
Using a VPN, does that show up as an IP address in some other location? Or will it just route info/requests for location to my ISP and known location?
Will these new browsers and things like protonmail still run on an old Win 7 machine? If I upgrade soon I'm thinking of getting a bare machine perhaps with Linux and not going the HP/Dell/Etc route with all the MS bs already installed, so will those browsers and such run easily? (in other words can a non-nerd install them and get them to work ? )
Its great for you to post all this in these times, but there's still the non tech oriented folks out there that some of this seems like gibberish to. I'm one of those that knows enough to get me i nto trouble.
Oh I get it. I used to shoot missiles in the Navy for a living. And I'm GenX and didn't use a personal computer until after graduating from college lol. On my last ship, we had no IT staff and no computer network (old destroyer) but the captain looked at me and said "Weaps" you have all the technical people onboard, I want you to install a computer network throughout the ship. I laughed for about 5 seconds and then wanted to cry. I found 3 basement hackers in my department and I read 800 page Microsoft manuals for 8 months and we got it done. Workstations, servers, firewalls, routers and fiber optics all the way to the desktops. It was hell but I learned a lot.
We're talking about trying to secure everything. In a perfect world, that would be great. I'm hoping there are alternatives out there that are more secure than what we typically use today that aren't a royal PITA to use. There are some simple things that people can do to make a pretty good difference. Other things, I'm trying to figure out. I may come to the conclusion that there is no easy way to get rid of all the tools we use in our daily life. If that's the case, maybe a person chooses to use something like Gmail or the like for 95% of your garbage email. And for the sensitive email, you use a free protonmail account.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we may find that we need to organize, just like the scumbags have. We may need to form groups in our community and share sensitive information. That mean that the whole group gets a free one address protonmail account. Or Maybe the whole group gets a Signal messenger account and everyone is on a group list that can receive short notice blast of time sensitive information. "Mob downtown burning shops show up behind the high school asap". You get the idea.
So even though I hope there's a way to go all secure, you may have to have multiple tools. Maybe you blast to a group over regular email "Urgent alert check your protonmail..." And people log in and get the encrypted email message. Make sense?
Sorry for the novel, just thinking out loud. You can login to a protonmail account from any browser. You just go to the web site and log in. There are also standalone apps if that's your thing. Like I said earlier, I'm also learning as I go.
