Internet Anonymity

So, at the Moment, we all are under the Social Media Ban(If you're living in Sri Lanka). Everyone started to use VPN to access those certain Social Media Sites. Recent News had informed that anyone using VPN to access such platforms will be tracked and Punished by law.

How does this tracking happens? And how the hackers hide their identity when they break into those most secure impregnable websites?

One of the main reason, for that is that they hide their IP addresses from prying eyes of the authorities. 

For those who don't know what is IP address, IP addresses allow the location of literally billions of digital devices that are connected to the Internet to be pinpointed and differentiated from other devices. In the same sense that someone needs your mailing address to send you a letter, a remote computer needs your IP address to communicate with your computer. (source:IP Address)

Using various techniques, a hacker can hide his identity on the internet. For example: A hacker from Pakistan will use an IP address in North Korea to do his dirt work, making the authorities think the leet operation was done from North Korea (Digital Espionage).

People are becoming more open about most of their internet activities (Thanks to Facebook & they admit that it is bad for people). But some of us, would prefer the rest of the world staying in the dark about their activities. It might be individuals from a nation that represses internet access to someone wanting to access something which is not available in their country (i.e a series on Netflix that’s not available in their country). Irrespective of the reason, these following tricks should find your attention.

Proxy

Whether you're a pro or just a beginner, the PROXY is the most simplest to hide your information on internet. For those don't know what proxies are, a basic idea of how they work – a proxy will reroute your connection from via a third party server so the website you access will not be able to read data specific to you.

This following scenario is the best example of how Proxy Servers work:

Many schools block access to popular websites such as Facebook. Students can use proxy servers to circumvent this security. However, by connecting to proxy servers, they might be opening themselves up to danger by passing sensitive information such as personal photos and passwords through the proxy server. Some content filters block proxy servers in order to keep users from using them to bypass the filter (Source : Wikipedia)

This is just an example, in reality, the proxy will hide all of your information from the resources you access. Any server on the other end will only get the information that you provide.
There are plenty of Free and Paid Proxy Servers. If you intend to use a proxy to carry out some serious work, its recommended to stay away from a Free Proxy

Some popular proxies:

• BuyProxies
• HideMyAss
• MyPrivateProxies
• YourPrivateProxy
• EZProxies
• Anonymous-Proxies
• LimeProxies
• SSLPrivateProxy
• NewIPNow
• SquidProxies

 TOR

Another popular method of hiding your information & a really popular one is - Using TOR Browser and TOR Network.The Tor network in simpler terms sounds like a proxy on steroids. The network will bounce your connection across multiple points to provide even higher anonymity to it’s user. Their network contains multiple tunnels across the globe, that are used to bounce the users signal.

Tor is an anonymity tool used by those who want to stay private and uncensored when browsing the Internet. Over time, it’s grown to be pretty darn good at this. This makes the security, stability, and speed of the underlying network critical to those depending on it

At an extremely high level, Tor works by bouncing connections from your computer to destinations (such as google.com) through a series of intermediate computers, or "relays".

By default, Tor bounces connections through 3 relays. Each of these have a specific role to play (Guard, Middle & Exit Relay). To know more visit Jorden-Wright's blog

The network is accessed from the TOR Browser and websites on the network have a specific address that you need to know to be able to access them. While it does provide anonymity, You should also know there are threats using the network. If you're anonymous means the one you contact in that network is also anonymous. The network is secure, but the browser itself isn't. The Tor browser is just a variation of the Firefox browser and is susceptible to everything Firefox is susceptible to.

(P.S: Let's see how to install & Configure TOR Browser on my next post)

VPN

A VPN(Virtual Private Network) is the next level of security. A VPN extends a private network over the public network, which in turn scrambles the data passing between you and a web server leaving it useless for anyone trying to access it. It doesn't prevent someone form attacking your machine directly, but does a hell of a job on hiding your identity.

Using VPN with one of the above mentioned technique offers the best possible way to hide your identity on the internet.

More Advanced Option

These above said methods may sound secure, there is always a small possibility of someone tracking you back. Even with all these 3 options, someone can still send you a malware to your machine or simply track down your MAC Address.
If we take the analogy of humans then we can say that MAC address is your name (with the additional proviso that it is unique in the world ) whereas IP address is your residential address. You can have different addresses at different times but your name would always be the same.(Source : Quora)

If one wishes to cover one’s tracks on the Internet, find a free WiFi access point, modify your WiFi card’s MAC address, and boot your computer from a “live CD”, running totally in the RAM will give you the absolute highest order of anonymity possible. (For education purpose only :-P)