YSK how to stay anonymous online

Your machine has a MAC address that doesn't change. The wifi is offered by a handful of ISP's. The location and time of the laptop even being one could be tracked by the internet service provider. If you log into email, the email client is supposed to hide things from your ISP, but probably doesn't hide much if anything.

Your Web browser is searching your cookies and supercookies for targeted ads. Your zip code is guessed by your IP address.

If you log into your email or Facebook or twitter, your ISP knows you visited the site, at least.

Ten years ago the MPAA/RIPA convicted somebody (comcast? Sprint? Both?) To give up a list of all the names ans adresses of people who pay the bill and have had MAC's download torrents (assumed movies or music) and they complied while some ISP's allegedly did not comply, which didn't result in any prosecutions I know of, but resulted in a lot of users dropping that service provider over another technology (so, say, getting or losing broadband instead of dial up or cable or satellite).

Your name was irrelevant in 2005. Only your MAC mattered, because the industries were tracking patterns of the collective of society for things like pie charts.

However, if they stored the data, and later you became famous, then conceivably somebody could go back and match your name to that activity.

If all the people by the McDonald's on main street and flower street in your town start Googling "mcnugget Sal monila food poison symptoms" then google knows the location of all of those people. Google doesn't tell McDonald's HQ nor the CDC nor that franchise owner. In the future, though, somebody mining that old data could try to find out who you were. Without a warrant the Feds can request the idenitty of any of those people searching for McDonald's food poisoning, and issue a gag order that criminalized telling you that the information was given to the Feds. This is all done by secret courts. This is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted years ago by Congress and the Feds. I think the SCOTUS has even ruled on it, and know congress subcommittees have openly ruled on it. These are secret courts that approve everything, like over 98% of all secret warrants. The secret courts are like FIFA or FISA or something. It isn't a secret that they exist, this isn't black ops, it is just that everything is secret clearance and your defense attorney cannot ask about it when it is used against you. It is the exact reason without conjecture that our founding fathers wrote a number of rights, all being violated.

So yes, everything can be traced to you.

Also, there are Faraday bags like a Faraday cage for laptops and cell phones sold to people with top secret laptops and cell phones because iPhones and androids can have the cameras turned on, and video feed sent wirelessly to Feds or spies, and the HD data sent the same way.

/r/YouShouldKnow Thread Parent