How to maintain anonymity on the Internet: expert advice

How to maintain anonymity on the Internet: expert advice
They say there is no anonymity on the Internet. But is this really the case, and how to go unnoticed?

And there are situations when you can lose anonymity because of a harmless publication on a social network – for example, if you publish a photo with a geographical label, this will allow you to calculate the location of the author, and with a high degree of probability - himself.

It's all about the metadata of the files. For example, phones and digital cameras "attach" a long "trail" of data to photos – including the date and time of the shooting, geographical coordinates, data about the device, and sometimes the name of its owner. When publishing, this data may be stored in a photo, which under some conditions is dangerous.

Photos with geomatics, among other proofs, became the basis for several high-profile journalistic investigations (including concerning Russia's involvement in well-known events).

All this poses a direct threat not only to the anonymity of a person, but also to his life and health. But if the bank "loses" the dossier on customers without their knowledge, then some threats to anonymity can still be eliminated independently.

Methods of protection available to everyone
On the web, you can find a lot of examples of how different people protect their personal data and their personal space in general. For example, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg seals a laptop webcam with duct tape (and after all, he knows much more about IT than the average layman), someone trusts antiviruses, and someone trusts regular operating system protection tools.

But the easiest way to use sites with a high level of risk is the banal "Incognito" mode in browsers (it may be called differently, but the essence is the same everywhere). Ramil Khantimirov from StormWall says that this will be enough for some situations:

The "Incognito" mode guarantees that the sites you have visited will not receive full information that you are you: social network trackers will not work, and search engines will not "remember" where you were and what information you were looking for. Also, the browser will not save the site in the history of visits, and images from it will not be cached on disk. This is usually enough to safely access a resource with which you do not want to share your data or, for example, log in to an already open site under another account. However, private mode does not hide your main identifier in the Network - the IP address

In other words, if the provider, the state (if necessary) and the site owner see user data in the normal mode, then the "Incognito" mode is directed only against the latter. On the other hand, this is a good option to open some very specific site, and then not get a flurry of contextual advertising on the same topic.

But still, in this mode, user data is available to the provider and the security forces. And how to hide your tracks even better? Here are some simple ways:

disable geolocation in the phone if it is not needed at the moment. Few people know this, but Google can track the movements of users of Android devices;
use the device unlock by fingerprint;
do not give access to geodata, microphone, camera and network to applications that do not need it to perform the main function;
follow the basic rules of information security – do not disable the standard operating system protection tools, and it is better to install third-party antivirus software, do not install unfamiliar third-party applications, etc.;
do not make publicly available photos and videos that can be used to find out some personal information (which is undesirable to disclose).
That is, the user must do the minimum that is required of him - not to give his personal information into the hands of those who can use it to harm.

There are slightly more complex ways – for example, proxy servers and VPNs, which are free. This will also allow you to partially hide your information, but you need to remember that information security is almost never free.

Of course, this will not give a full guarantee of anonymity, says Elena Volotovskaya from the Softline Venture Partners fund:

The more data about yourself you want to hide, the more difficult this task will be. Along with using special software, you will definitely have to resort to "digital austerity" (delete your study records from all public services) and thereby lose the widest opportunities for communication and information search that Internet access provides. But even such voluntary self-restraint may not be enough. If they want to install digital surveillance on you, they will definitely do it. Including using extremely sophisticated methods. For example, they will use your phone's gyroscope as a microphone or track you by how your smartphone takes pictures – each device has a unique set of camera sensor errors. You can even determine that you are you by your keyboard handwriting: each of us uses our own typing patterns on a computer or phone. And these patterns are as unique as fingerprints.

Паниковать не стоит – нужно понимать, что в мире миллиарды интернет-пользователей, и отследить действия всех в ручном режиме не удастся. И самое главное, мало кому нужны персональные данные физического лица. Злоумышленники обычно пытаются получить информацию о ком-то действительно важном и влиятельном, а корпорации располагают достаточным количеством обезличенных данных, чтобы предлагать целевую рекламу.

Among the reasons, the expert calls the insufficient skills of specialists engaged in such investigations; the fact that the police poorly use modern developments to combat cybercriminals, as well as the lack of a normal system of forensic accounting and identification (for example, stolen phones). Of course, it is possible to investigate with the available arsenal of funds, but such an investigation will not be very effective.

Therefore, it is up to the users themselves to protect their anonymity on the network. And there are several advanced options here:

use a VPN or a TOR network. According to Ramil Khantimirov, using a public VPN is unlikely to protect your data, but there are also serious paid services. And in the TOR network, data is transferred between several nodes, confusing the traces. The speed of work suffers from this, but in the end it becomes almost impossible to calculate the user;
use a non-illuminated SIM card for the most important services. For example, banking, government services, access to the most important email can be linked to it. The most important thing is not to publish this phone number anywhere, and it is better not to use it at all for communication, only for user authentication;
delete metadata from files. For example, there are even special programs for photo processing;
if possible, turn off the microphones from the devices (if they are not necessary);
carefully read all agreements where personal data is concerned. Often there is a clause allowing the operator to transfer them to third parties - then it is better to abandon such an agreement or ask to rewrite it.
These and other recommendations will help to protect your personal data from at least the most obvious threats. But still, there is no anonymity on the Internet yet – and it is unlikely that it will appear in the foreseeable future.