@darkdoomer @Background Pony #DDF5
I see two approaches and I know no one should trust TOR or VPN. Even if you use a hardened throaway gentoo/tails, with custom screen resolution there will always be one exploit left, given you have an army of professionals running scripts ( literally the government does that, the PHAROS platform here in France, the NSA, the FBI, Eurogendfor… ) that's their job. With more or less success. An autist with enough determination can also work hard and find ways to identify you on the internet, maybe you forgot to turn off Flash (showing your real IP) or post from a similar location, same language, or even do the silly mistake to post an avatar or a photo in JPEG that contains the EXIF data and signature of your camera or editing software.
Now FB, Twitter and major big sites makes it impossible to run without allowing all scripts or plugins or having a slightly secure but outdated browser.
You shouldn't trust your ISP either. At least with Tor you're connecting to three separate nodes, entry nodes which know who you are but not what you're doing, and exit nodes which know what you're doing but not who you are. Since many Tor nodes are ran by volunteers spread across the world, it's a difficult task for governments to control them all and deanonymize Tor. Besides, I'm pretty sure some governments like the US use Tor for their activities, and if they tried to break what they use, then they could be identfied much easier. VPNs are completely centralized so you'd have to trust your VPN provider not to fuck with your traffic. It's true that nobody can be completely anonymous, even if they use Whonix, inside a QubesOS VM, with all Javascript disabled, connecting only to public wi-fi, using a Coreboot or Libreboot Thinkpad, there will always be some way to identify you, but shouldn't we try to make it harder? If you can't trust Tor, what makes you think you're safe behind a VPN?
I'm going to leave off with some advice. Obviously off-topic, but this thread is already a dumpster fire. They never answered my original question if any boorus had onion services.
1. Use Tor. It's better than using nothing at all or even a VPN. If for some reason Tor was compromised and no longer an option, we'd just find another darknet, like I2P, or freenet. The Tor project only recommends using Tor Browser, though
Links might work since it can mimic Tor's user-agent and doesn't support javascript or CSS (and in text mode, doesn't support any graphics).
2. Buy a Thinkpad if you can. Any old model will do, preferably an older one because the new ones are trash. Install Coreboot or Libreboot (preferably Coreboot), disable Intel ME.
3. Install a Linux distro. Whonix is preferred for anonymity, but isn't suitable for daily use. Use a distro that doesn't use
systemd. Devuan is good for most people.
4. If you don't want to use Tor, use Firefox with this
user.js. Set your search engine to
a good Searx instance. Install either uMatrix (unmaintained but still works, can block anything on a per-site basis) or uBlock Origin (much easier to use) and use that to disable JavaScript.
@Background Pony #12D1
Depends of the version, Windows 10 is insecure but for searching and digging, there was some telemetry on Windows 7 that can be removed and uninstalled, through GPEDit and some registry manipulations to fully disable and uninstall WU and other services. At this point really just dual boot Windows/Linux and boot on Linux when you need to, Or use it on a spare machine, so you can run both.
Linux is actually less secure than Windows, though the site I linked to focuses only on security and not privacy/anonymity. In terms of privacy, Windows 10 is spyware, most Linux distros are not.
