Surfing the Web Like a Super Spy

got news from my co host Matt Frederick. Unfortunately, Matt is diligently working. Uh and right now he said he is here in spirit, um, but he can't be in here in person, right he he is. Actually, he had planned on joining us and this would have been a crazy four person podcast, something that has never been attempted ever in the history of the Internet. I'm not sure if that's but yeah, no, very impressive, yes, at least the history of tech stuff at anywhere. So but unfortunately,

as he is, he has slammed. He of course is also a video editor and uh, you guys might not know this. Uh, that takes some time. So but the reason we decided to bring Ben in is because you may remember if you listen to this show often. Back in April, Lauren and I did an episode about tour and the Deep Web, and at the end of the show we said, hey, guys, would you like to learn more about how you can actually surf the web anonymously?

And all of you said yes, every single life. In fact, yeah, some of you voted more than once, which we appreciate the enthusiasm. So we have been trying to find the right time to to get together and have a discussion about what exactly it takes to really serve the web anonymously and and Ben, as we have all discovered, it's it's not it's not just a simple thing that you hit a little switch in your browser and you're good

to go. Yeah. It's a situation where we quickly learn the difference between the concept of something being possible and the concept of something being plausible. Yeah, it is possible two access the web anonymously finger quotes if you're very, very careful and you take a lot of time and you do some things that we're going to talk about today. Uh,

it is not plausible that you will succeed. It's not plausible certainly the more frequently you access the web, absolutely right, Yeah, because the more times you need to do it, the harder it's going to become for you to to to sustain that anonymity, and the more you want to do. If you're doing like one thing, that's fine. If you're trying to browse Netflix, it's not really Yeah, if you're logging into your Netflix account, really, uh, we have some

bad news for you. Anything that involves the user name password probably not really the most anonymous of activities. But first, just as an overview, Yeah, there are a lot of different reasons why someone might want to serve the web anonymously. Some are even completely legit. Yeah, there we can get the the the ones, the shady ones out of the way. I mean, obviously if you're planning on doing something that

is you know, not strictly speaking legal. Yeah, Like, uh, Lauren, Jonathan, you and I Matt decide that it's finally time that we robbed that bank, and then we say, okay, there are a couple of things we need to learn about banks and security cameras and escape routes and stuff like that.

We would want to serve the web anonymously, but that is, as you said, just something we need to get away from at the top, because there are so many legitimate reasons that people not just in the United States, but

around the world especially would have to serve the web anonymously. Right. So, for example, one of the one of the ones that you hear over and over our journalists reporters, right, people who perhaps have to communicate with a source and that source needs to remain anonymous in order for this this uh information exchange to happen, or to protect their own

safety exactly. Yeah, we could be talking about someone who's giving a very high level security leak kind of information that really has the potential to affect millions of people. This is kind of like that Snowden situation, Edward Snowden, So you would definitely want to maintain that person's anonymity as well as you know, the communications that are going on between you until you are ready to publish a

full story. Now, you know, responsible journalists are going to be doing things like making sure that the information they get is as verifiable as possible before moving forward. So it's not like we're just saying, you know, this is a way for people to spread misinformation, although that does happen, but is totally cromulent for journalists to want to have this kind of level of an emity when trying to

to to coordinate the source of stuff. Sure, also in the tech sector, for example, if you're developing a new a new piece of technology, or a new iteration of a technology and you don't want other companies to know what you're up to, Yeah, yeah, I mean you know we how many times have we seen leaks from things like a supply chain where we learn about upcoming as Apple is probably the best example of this, right because everyone is so invested in learning what Apple's next product

is that you've got an intense level of scrutiny on the entire supply chain from the point where they're building the chips to the screens to assembling the whole piece together, so that you can have security totally locked down at Apple, and somewhere else along the chain there might be a leak. Well. Even that that extends even to just the research and development phase where people are using the Internet for for legitimate purposes and they don't want that information getting out there.

They want to have as much secrecy there as possible, especially if people are aware like Hey, you know Jem down the street. Did you know that Jem is like the head of product development for Apple's I phone. That would be like people, Oh, you don't say exactly, which is good that they're using such a non suspicious voice to to play it off. The news about Jim certainly

should not be twirling your mustache. So there there are a number of other reasons as well, and in many cases these are these are things that might sound overly dramatic, but it really does happen. Internet access is not created equally by any means, and we're gonna explore some things that might sound foreign to a lot of viewers or excuse me, a lot of listeners who are not who

are not acquainted with this. And one of the one of the biggest reasons that people would need anonymous internet access is something that's kind of um personally important to me for people to have this right. If you're in a country where government descent is not allowed, or where you can be penalized for going on you know, the Chinese version of Twitter or some short uh, then you need to be able to have some sort of safe way to do this, and um, unfortunately, many countries there's

not really a legal way to do this. Sure, Yeah, so we have a like, let's let's take the definition of human rights as say, would be defined by the United Nations. Okay, there are some countries out there that have have policies that kind of go against a lot

of those definitions. And if you if you believe that humans actually possess these rights, whether they belong to one country or another, then you probably also believe that they need to have this kind of ability to remain anonymous and yet voice their concerns, their thoughts, to be able to assemble at least virtually, and be able to to tell that they are not a lone person in a sea of darkness. This kind of it does sound like we're going dramatic, but this is the Arab spring work. Yeah,

this is a literal situation that happens. You know, being able to share your ideas and also access information is so important and is denied to too many citizens of this world, and for those of us who live who are fortunate enough to live in places that at least ostensibly protect those human rights. Um, you know, there's still other things that we could become victim to. For example, just people who want to cause midschief or hackers who

want to target you for one reason or another. Um and it may not even be that they want to target you specifically, but you just kind of want to avoid all of that and cut down on all that possibility. You may just want to serve the web anonymously because they're there are only certain things you want to have access to. You don't care about everything else out there. So it's not like you're gonna go on YouTube and watch a billion videos. It's not like you're gonna go

on Facebook and update your status profile. All you want to do is be able to research something, read up on something, whatever, and that's it. You might want to be able to serve the web anonymously just to avoid the possibility that you're going to run into, you know, troublemakers. But here's the question then, right, and I think we've done a great job showing this, uh, this need and this legitimate interest in anonymous web us. Why is it

so difficult? Why is it possible but not plausible? Okay? Well, first of all, just the way the internet works makes it really really hard, right, because in order for you to be able to get any information to your computer, that information has to has nowhere to go, right. It has to know what pathway to take so that it gets from the server where it lives on to your

computer so you can see it. Now. This is no matter what kind of service you're using on the internet, if you're trying to access something, as long as you're not just pushing stuff out and you're expecting to get something back, it has to know where to go. Uh. The thing I was thinking, I was imagined like you are trying to send a message to somebody, and I, you know, like I want to get a note specifically to Lauren. And Lauren has happened to take a trip

where she's all the way out in California. And the way I've chosen to get the message to her is I've written the messaging code and I've left no identifying information on it whatsoever. I've even I've even used my right hand instead of my left hand to right the code,

so my handwriting is disguised. I then wrapped that that message up in a little ribbon, tie it to a helium balloon, let it go, and hope that somehow the balloon finds its way to Lauren, that she is able to decode the message, able to decipher despite the fact that I've left no identifiable information in there about who sent the message, who it was, who wrote it, and then in turn be able to respond in a in a similar way and send that message back to me

where it just magically makes its way to me. Clearly, that scenario is impossible, right, yeah, Yeah. The the real way that the Internet works is more like if the postal system was made entirely of clear boxes and and everyone passing the box along the route from you to whoever you're sending it to, you can see exactly what's going on in it unless you've taken some kind of

step to you or to encrypted. Right, So, if if you have an encrypted message, let's say, then you've got a clear box which inside of it is a a an opaque box. So you know that there's a box, you know approximately how much information is there, and you know where it's coming from, and you know where it's going to because you have to have that address or

else the data just doesn't go anywhere. It would just would you, It would go to that first stop on the internet, and then there'd be nowhere to go because you wouldn't have any information saying hey, send this message to this destination. So, because you have to have these IP addresses so that information can actually go to where it needs to go and get back to where it needs to get back to, that limits how anonymous you

can be. Right now, that IP address can be assigned by an Internet service provider and it doesn't have to have anything to do with whatever machine you're on, right, the computer you're using does not necessarily it's not going to have the same IP address all the time. Yeah, it's not like tattooed with barcode or something like that,

but well, I mean probably it literally is. Barcode is not its IP address, right, right, So the that IP address is going to at least have a general idea of the geography that you are in, uh and based upon your habits what you use the Internet for, that

might be enough. Just the general geography and and your pattern of using the Internet, that could be enough to identify who is using the Internet, because the way eyebrows the Internet could be extremely different from the way say Lauren does, and I highly suspect it is, I imagine, so aside from when we're researching the same topic. In that case, we think we find literally all the same articles.

I am pretty sure that I watch a lot more YouTube videos about family surprising their kids with trips to Disney than Lauren does. I think you guys are about one for one on Corgy videos though. Corgy videos, yes, or I mean they rank highly on both sides, but they're they're sure there are anomalies. If you're only looking at Corgy video activity, then you might not be able to determine whether it's Lauren or whether which. Which is

a great point because it goes back to earlier. We can all recall hearing the big stink in the United States about um the government tracking metadata, and people would say, well, you know, metadata is not a big deal. It's just stuff like the address and the time, and and it's more the it's more like the measurement of the pages

of a book than the description of the story. However, from that, the reason it's important is exactly what you're saying, Johnathan, because it is possible to build um, not just a profile of a person, but to find the actual person. Yeah, from enough of that metadat Yeah, And and it doesn't take that much really, especially for particular types of meta data.

For example, if you have like a zip code and maybe a car make and model, well that and and a gender, Well, then you've really got enough information to really narrow it down to a handful of people. Because you know that you've got a population within a zip code. The gender will divide that essentially in half, and so how many of those people have a two thousand and four Yeah, and then you have essentially really narrowed it

down to a very small number of potential people. This is why it doesn't really require that much personal identifiable information to track it back to a specific person. Now, there's some things on the Internet that are not necessary for the Internet to work right or like, especially for

web browsing. So, for example, cookies. Cookies are not necessary to make the web work, although you'll probably go to a page occasionally that says, this website uses cookies, and let us tell you how ye enable them so that this website will work the way it's supposed to. Cookies

are just text files. They can include enough information that could be useful to the person using the website to customize your experience that the intent is so that if you keep going back to the same website frequently, it already knows things that you do and do not need, and so it will load much faster. It will give you more personalized experience, but it also means that there's some tracking that can happen there and identification that can

happen there. So turning that off is probably something you would want to do if you want to be anonymous. I'll go into more about that in a bed. Oh, Jonathan, welcome back to Amazon based on your browsing preferences. I can't wait to hear this. Yeah, here are several calendars of quarkies. Okay, that's fair, that's fair. Uh, that I just recently made a purchase, so I was wanting to see if perhaps somehow it was going to tie into

what I actually bought. But ows but not quite um And then things like like search engines can maintain activity logs, so and those will link back to an IP address. So let's say that you are using a computer, You've logged into the Internet, your computer has an IP address, and you start searching for various terms. This kind of goes back to that idea of the four of us

are all searching about robbing a bank. Now that that information, if we're let's say we're all using Google because it makes it easier if we just go ahead and use an example, Google's maintaining this activity log of all four of us independently using Google to research everything that is, to research about robbing a bank, and then later on the lawn law enforcement officials, uh subpoena Google to get those activity logs so that they can see who it

is in this geographic region that was looking for this stuff. Um, you know that's again that's another reason why when you start talking about really being anonymous using the web, you have to shy away from all the convenient says that make the web so useful in situations where you're not

as concerned about your anonymity. Yeah, that's a really great point, and that's something that, oddly enough, we were exploring both on this show and on car stuff, because there's this big idea about cars becoming connected to the cloud, right and the whole internet of cars knowing exactly where you are all the time, exactly exactly. And North has been parked outside of this dance club for a really long time.

He's cutting a rug and that's how Jonathan's car would sound. Yeah, I like to think that all my technology has has weird affectations in its speech, I hope so, because what else is the future would be no fun that you couldn't do. It would just be Yeah, it could all be like robot voice. But that gets old pretty quickly, right, So the um, the purpose of this this great thing called the Internet is inherently to share things that are

easily seen. It is not to hide things. So it's already, um, it's already unsurprising if you think about it that it's it's really difficult to participate in something that is all about telling people's stuff in a way that doesn't it's a communications platform, and if you're if you're trying to be completely anonymous in a communications platform, that's tricky. I mean, there are obviously message boards out there that allow for complete anonymity and uh complete complete being an in air

quotes which work really well over the radio. But yeah, it's it's it's definitely one of those things where, uh, you know, the the anonymity kind of can inhibit a lot of what makes the Internet so useful. So especially in these are modern Internet times, like as the Internet has grown in, big data has grown and and all these things we've we've been talking about websites storing information from you so that they can serve you better headlines that you're more likely to want to click on. Uh,

you're you're evading the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a that's a good way to say it. So with with this, we've we've painted the difficulty. We've talked about the reasons why you want to do it. So for all the people who wrote in and voted more than once saying yes, tell me how to surf anonymously? What? What? What would

they do? You? Guys, I'm asking for a friend. Okay, Well, then your friend needs to know that if if your friend, if he or she is truly determined to surf the web anonymously, he or she should be prepared to go to great lengths in order to do so, including if he or she plans on doing this more than once. Not using the same device burner, laptops, I like it, ye. Step Step one don't use your own device ever, No, not not connected to the internet anyway. Step one is

don't use your own device. Step two is you probably don't want to use like a mobile device that connects to the Internet because it's likely registered to you or to someone you know, and most of them have some

form of way of identifying where you are. So even if somehow you magically have a phone working where there's not a direct link between you and the phone, the fact that it is going to be able to determine where it is geographically, either just cell phone towers or it may have GPS enabled to that's going to give it even more specific location. Sure, you can turn three G or four G or whatever you have. You can

turn satellite service off on your phone. However, then you need to be connected to WiFi, and you can't just connect to you I mean, you can't just call up Comcast and be like, hey, I'd like to get some Internet, but anonymously never mind. Yeah, that's a really good way to not get an account, right that, Not that I know personally. The same thing is true about just Internet

service providers in general. Litering, Like like whether it's Comcast or whatever, whatever the i s P is, if you are trying to use your own, say your own setup at home, then automatically your I s P, you know, yeah, and know exactly they know which account it goes to at any rate, So you know that means that it's narrowed down who could potentially be the person actually doing

the searches. It's pretty much anyone who has access to your household, which is why if you're really trying to make this happen, ladies and gentlemen, you will need to find the most public computer possible. We're talking about libraries,

cyber cafes, uh, college campuses. Yeah. Yeah, you want to be able to use a computer where uh the real First of all, there's a possibility that any number of individuals could have been using that ability, right right, Yeah, It's one of those safety and numbers kind of issues that kind of comes up a lot in in our discussion. I think, yeah, so that's that's one thing you're and you don't want to use the same one twice in

a row. So if your session is over and then you think, oh shoot, I need to go do something else, you probably need to go to a different site. In fact, a different site entirely, like not even on that same network would be the best choice for you. I mean, ideally, the scary thing is about this that the more you think about it, uh, the larger the scale becomes. Because then, yes, you don't want to be on the same site. Yes, you don't want to be on the same network. Do

you want to be in the same city. Do you want to be in the you know what I mean, because it should be preferable to jump state borders really at that point, which which is a heck of a long drive just to uh, you know here in Georgia. Yeah, maybe you should try to serve the web anominous anonymously from Rhode Island. Uh. And also you would you would probably want to still try and hide the IP address

you're actually using, So you probably want to use a proxy. Proxies, by the way, come in all shapes and sizes, So some proxies you might see and you think, oh, well, this is perfect. I'm gonna go log into this proxy. Then from the the perspective of anyone outside of my browser, it's going to look as if the proxy is the computer that's doing all the searches. Right. So, Ben, let's say you are in our bank robbery scenario. You log into a proxy, you start searching information because you're gonna

be the bagman. You need to know what a bagman is because you actually don't know. You agree to it without actually knowing what the definition of the term one. Yeah, I just yes ended and now I'm like the intern in this. You didn't want to admit to the other people that you didn't know what a bagman to look cool like, I'm like, I you about proxies. Yeah, so now you've gone to look up the definition of bagman. We don't have any dictionaries nearby. So you know, you're thinking,

I gotta get online. You log into a cyber cafe and you go use a proxy, so that instead it looks like the proxy computer is the one that's doing the rees ur So that way, if someone ever starts to try and trace it back, they're going to go to this proxy, but they're not going to get to you, at least in theory, because a proxy could very well. I mean, first of all, they know that you are using the service. Otherwise, again, the communication can't ultimately get

to your computer. It's just somebody else too. To Lauren's earlier comparison, it's just somebody else carrying that clear box for you. Yeah. So if the proxy keeps activity logs, then there's the potential that law enforcement could trace back to that proxy and then service subpoenas saying we want to see all the activity logs, so we can figure out which individual user used this proxy service to get access to this information. And this has happened. This is

not a theoretical thing. Law enforcement has gone to VPNs and two proxies and said, okay, give us the paperwork, tell us who was here in the afternoons googling bagman. There's there's no guarantee either that a proxy is going to encrypt information for you, So it may very well be that again that pathway leads to the proxy, but there might be enough information anyway for them to be able to identify that Ben in fact, was the one

doing all the searches. So vpn tends to be a better choice because VPNs do encrypt a lot of stuff.

So the problem with VPNs, of course, is that first of all, you've got to pay into them, so again there's a connection between you and the vpn um and depending upon the VPNs policy, that may end up becoming an issue because even if we're not talking about bank rubbing, if we're instead we're talking about Ben is in a foreign country and he's trying to get a message out to his family, that's a that's an issue rights for the redeeming example that, uh, why why am I the guy?

Why can't you be in Turkmenistan? Well, because I I don't really leave my house. I think statistically speaking, you are of the three of us here the most likely to did see you, like walking down Morland taking a wrong turn and ending up there. I mean, that's true. I have a terrible sense of direction, Like it just hits a little wormhole and goes from goes from downtown Atlanta, Georgia to other people. Yeah, people do have to have

UM communications that way. But even with all we've done now is we're talking about ways to UM raise the to make it more inconvenient. Now, if you want to go the next step, so we're talking about you're you're using some sort of proxy service, whether it's VPN or an actual web proxy to hide. But let's say that you want to go even further. One thing you've got to be concerned about is the computer you are actually

on the device you're using at that moment. So if you are at a public place like a library, and you're logging into a computer, and you want to make sure that all of your activity on that computer does not stay there so that the you know, let's say that they get access to the actual physical computer you used, they could track back who you are that way, right, So you want to be able to disable the cookies

on that browser. You don't want anything coming back. You want to disable things like Flash and Java because these programs can often have identifiable information sent along, stuff that doesn't even seem to be necessary for whatever it's supposed to be doing within the context of the web page.

Disable all that. If you really want to go super spy, then you should also probably load a program onto like a USB flash drive that will allow you to boot the computer into a separate operating system than the one the computer natively runs that is specifically geared to allow you to log into something like tour the Onion router. So there are such things. There are such devices that, or such programs you can put onto a USB device like the Amnesia Incognito Live system also known as TAIL.

That's a Linux based stripped down operating system. Really, all it's meant to do is, you know, you would you would turn the computer off, which is already going to be an issue in a public library. Trust me, you plug this USB thumb drive into the into the port, turn the computer back on. It will boot from the USB, so instead of running its normal boot system, it will go to the USB for it, load the stripped down OS. That's just launching this tour uh interface, and then you

could access what you needed. Turn everything off again, unplugged the USB, turn it back on, and then you're gone. Even the first idea, Yeah, you probably exfoliated thoroughly to get rid of all possible Right. It sounds it sounds like we're being silly, but no, if you seriously are talking about doing everything you possibly can to preserve anonymity, this is like the level of extreme you have to go to because there's so many different ways to leave

behind traces. Yeah. Absolutely, And I'm really glad that you said that, because when when we talk about this, this booting up, in this turning off the computer and having and turn it back on, one thing that a lot of you are probably realizing out their listeners is that some libraries will check for an I d uh. It's true. We can again scale this up. Maintaining anonymity requires more

than just the use of software. Of consider a closed circuit television, right, and this this sounds like some tinfoil stuff to people. But uh, just for comparison, one of the most observed populations in the world is the population of the United Kingdom. According to the Telegraph, there's one surveillance camera there for every eleven to fourteen people. So that means that no matter what you do, uh, just in your day to day walking, even if you never

leave your house. And and I should tell you that there's a fair percentage of those cameras that aren't connected to anything, but there are enough of them that are connected to something that Yeah, that's a really good point. There are dummy cameras a lot of the UK, but that that's one of those things like if you panopticon, it's great. Yeah, because if you think you're being watched, then you're more likely to behave yourself. That's kind of creepy,

that's the idea, but that's totally the idea. Sure, sure, And just because you happen to live in a country that doesn't have such a widespread governmental program does not mean I mean, here in the U S. They're cameras everywhere, but they're mostly privatized, or I mean some cities do have a lot of traffic cameras or stuff like that in a local level. But I mean, but also the number of cameras that are watching you every time you step into a mall or Disney World or anything like that.

Are just a lot of cameras, just the cameras that are owned by private citizens that aren't doing they're not trying to observe you. They're they're they're taking selfies. Are taking Yeah no, I'm just telling like people, there's stuff where and this you have no idea what kind of a security they may or may not be used. So that information may end up becoming public publicly available because

they're uploading it to Twitter or something. Yeah. Sure, sure if if Ben is down in internet cafe searching for whatever bank robbery related stuff he's searching for, and Matt across the tree across the street is taking a selfie and it's like, oh, hey, isn't that Ben, And he's he's and he's tagged his selfie as my bank robbing adventure with Ben. The cat is out of the bagman. Yeah, there we go. That's nice. But that's that is a

really good point. So if you wanted to be completely anonymous, one of the things you would have to worry about is your appearance, and now it would look so as silly as it's may sound. Uh, it would be better to vary your appearance while you're access in these different sites,

which just sounds bizarre to me. If if I had to do that, if I had to be anonymous, if any of us had to be that anonymous, wouldn't it be time for us to really sit down and have have a come to I would definitely need to start questioning my life choices. Yeah, like what led me to this point where I can't let anyone know that I'm

looking up a recipe for Scotch eggs? And if the world itself had reached that point, then you sit there and say, we have become one of those dystopian science fiction novels that I used to love because I thought of it as a warning for what the future could be. And now the future is that. Then then you have

a serious like okay, what now moment? But beyond that, I mean, you also have to think about the other devices that you own and whether you probably don't want to carry them with you when you're like, you don't want to have a smartphone with you, right, You certainly don't want to wear your fit. Now you don't want to you don't want anything that's got Bluetooth on it. Like. Uh, and and we didn't even mention this, but I should go back and point this out to when you go

and you're using some other places uh internet. H. Let's say that you do have like a super cheap notebook and you're just going to use it this one time. You you've planned it out, this is this is you're you're going to send some messages. Maybe you are in like a foreign country and you just you have to get this information out and this is this is your best chance. If you're going someplace that's using WiFi, then you also have to remember there are programs that can

sniff it. Essentially, they're looking for the messages that are going between your computer and the the the wireless router in that business, right, you want a hard connection for better? Yeah,

hard connection is better. Or you want to have a way of making sure that you're encrypting any information that's coming between your computer and going to the router, Like if it's encrypted to a point where anyone listening in, uh, you know, they can grab the data but they can't make sense of it, then you're better off, which is

probably realistically the best you can hope for. There are some fantastic encryption programs out there, um, there are also some fantastic code breaking programs out there right, and there's some that are classified. We don't know their capability. And it's always an arms race encryption. Yeah, yeah, it's that's just the nature of it. It pushes encryption forward, but also pushes hacking forward. For example, the fact that now

we have graphics processors that have multiple cores. That's well, a lot of hackers used to try and break encryption. They just they write up a program, or more frequently, they download a program that someone else's written that will do a brute force attack, but they're doing it by dividing up the attack among multiple processor cores. So something that would traditionally take, you know, a hundred years for a computer to crack, because you've got other processor cores

and they can all work on it in parallel. The more cores you have, the less time it's going to take you to actually break that encryption. That's kind of a scary world, but it's it's the world that's that, you know. It's it's one of the tradeoffs of having this amazing technology that lets me go online and get my my avatar blown away by a sniper for thirty second time. Hey, that guy's camping. Don't be it's a legitimate strategy. Yeah it is, it is, but it did not.

Camping is not a legitimate strategy. Oh my gosh, are you the sniper? Have you been anonymously? Actually, Lauren is the sniper. She likes to go to the end of the map and in a nice little crow's nest area and pick people off. I circulate. Okay, well, that's that's true sniper tactics. That sniper's work. You fire and then you change locations, kind of off on a tall I have something important that we we should remember to see. And yes, that I forgot one of the biggest disadvantages.

Let's say everything works out. You have a spot on disguise and and there you are and your poncho and your sombrero at the library monocle and your crazy makeup to prevent any kind of facial recognition to yah, yeah, you just just forget eight and a half yards, right, let's do this. If right really doing it, And there you are checking out your your bank robbery stuff or whatever it is Matt's doing over there, and then you say, uh. Then then you say, oh, okay, I'm in. I have

X amount of time that I can spend here. And that's when you realize that accessing the web anonymously it's pretty slow. Oh yeah, yeah, because you're routing that traffic through a proxy or VPN before it even gets to you. That does end up adding a lot of time. So if you're using something like Tour, if you've ever used Tour, then you may think like, man, this is just crawling today. But that's because yeah, the process that tour uses and go back and listen to our Tour episode if you

if you want to learn more about it. But the process that uses, while it is uh a pretty secure um approach, recently we've found out that not necessarily completely secure approach UM, but that that does take time because instead of it going from the regular route it would across the Internet if you were just using the surface Web, it has to do all these jumps from one node to the next through a circuit of nodes before it can finally get to you. And that's on top of

just the regular traffic it would normally do well. Luckily, you're you're not again, you're you're probably not browsing Corgy videos viator. I hope not, because you will be waiting far too long for the adorable nous to come and hit you in the face. Or at least that's what Big Corgy wants you to think. That's that's that's both terrifying and and just absolutely you know, as it's a slightly shorter Clifford the Red Dog. Yeah, I welcome our

our Corky overlords, cork overlords lords at any rate. The message you have to take home here is that the Internet is meant, like Ben said, as a communication device, as something where people are accessing and sharing, and in order to do that you have to give up some anonymity in order for it to be effective and easy to do. It doesn't mean that you absolutely must give

up all anonymity. It does not mean that you cannot, at least upon occasion, UH do your best to cover all of your digital tracks and have a reasonable expectation of being you know, pretty much under the radar. But in order to do it, as like that's the way you access the web, it's really not practical, Yeah, it's it's not practical. At all and for everyone listening in this UM. First one, I say, guys, thank you so much for having me on your show. It's always it

always makes my day. UM. And I want to special message to any of your listeners. I hope you guys already know this. Incognito mode just doesn't leave a trace on your computer. Everybody knows what you're looking at. Yeah, no, I mean yeah, because the router that your computer is going to everything is clear. Like you know, you the when you type in www dot corgis rob Banks dot com. The router knows that that's the website you went to. Your sp knows. Yeah, everyone knows, and they know which

I p which, which computer looked up that information. The only thing that is is being white clear is your browser. Right. That's just so that other people in your house cannot immediately access the information. Like Jonathan's got a real corgy problem and I'm going to prove it by looking at search history. Oh he's been using incognito mode boiled again. Yeah,

that's the only time that works, right that machine. So I just wanted to save anybody the trouble and also disclaimer for anyone listening in that might be working for a government agency. I have not planned Rabba Bank, nor do I ever planned Rabba Bank. I do, however, have a soft spot for quirkies, and I'll go on record with that one. I mean, Ben actually helped produce an episode about why you shouldn't rob banks over on brain stuff.

It's the perfect cover. You just ruin everything. Well once, once you do learn the definition of bagman, it'll all just kind of fall into place. Well, Ben, thank you for for joining us. And also, guys, if you haven't listened to stuff they don't want you to know, are gone to see the videos and the incredible work that Ben and Matter are doing. You definitely got to check

it out. It's some phenomenal stuff. There will be a companion episode to this episode you're listening to right now, on stuff they don't want you to know, which will we will be recording almost immediately after we sign off of this episode. So if you couldn't, if you didn't get enough, if you thought, I have got to hear these three people talk more about anonymity and the deep Web and things of that nature, and Coregs will probably

somehow make an appearance. We can't promise that. Maybe we'll have worked out the coregies in our system by then go check that out it. Uh, you'll definitely if you enjoyed tech stuff, there's gonna be tons of episodes on stuff they don't want you to know that are really

going to appeal to you. Absolutely. In that next episode, I wanted to put in we will go more into that tour thing that we alluded to, the recent problems that tour has had and and some of the reasons why even using tour does not completely protect you, which which is pretty fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Right, So if you want to know more about that, well then you're gonna have to subscribe to another podcast. But that's okay, because it's an awesome podcast and you should

be subscribing to it already. But yeah, you can find all of their content I believe at stuff they don't want you to know dot com. Yes, absolutely excellent. Um, and uh, their YouTube channel I believe is a conspiracy stuff. We have like three names because we're trying to be an anonymous show on the internet. Yeah, it does help to be a really good on YouTube. Change your identity every twenty or thirty minutes. Yeah, you guys know that

when people asking some publics, we say that we're YouTube. Okay, that's fair, all right. Well then, well that's all for our show today, guys. Thanks Ben for wrapping up. Yeah, if you guys have any suggestions for future topics that we can cover on tech Stuff, send us an email that addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop us a line on Tumbler, Twitter, or Facebook or handle it. All three is tech Stuff

hs W and we'll talk to you again. Released for more on this and thousands of other topics because it has to works dot com