We all know that to communicate with others nowadays over any communications device is becoming a risky venture. New laws are being imposed that take away an individuals rights but no one has yet to be convicted under these new standards. Yet data is being collected on a daily basis and can be stored for a period of one year. Should anything occur to flag you for investigation, all data collected on you through these means can be used to convict you. What happens if a friend says something about your character as a joke, yet the comment is construed as disloyal to your country,etc? Lawyers have twisted words in a court of law since their advent and things happen today where courts are not even considered...
Folks need their own plans to secure their communications and have to prepare them in advance like any other item on their prep list. You may have family and friends abroad that you want to connect with but can't have others read it. There are options, some old, some new. Codes came into play during WWII and some were broken, other not. Computers have changed much with encryption that can take even super computers 100 years to sort out. (i know, not according to the movies....).
Here is a link to some options. I suggest that you download them and store them away for a rainy day as the links often disappear without notice. http://www.secretcodebreaker.com/
There are various codes here and you might want to grab them all.
These same codes are available for many of the smartphones today and can be found by using search phrases such as "cipher" or even "secret codes". Cipher Tools is the top choice for Androids.
Chatting is likely more the favourite method of communications for most of us. Switching to Camfrog instead of using Skype may be beneficial as Microsoft bought out Skype
and those new updates likely are now less secure. there are other programs such as Chat Secure and Cryptotel which want a small fee but guarantee privacy.
If you don't want to leave a footprint when cruising the web, go to a TOR program.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idh0aysfzRM
If your interested, get it here...
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
~ Stay Safe ~
Here's another code that you can likely store in your noggin, it is used by prisoners everywhere and is fairly simple to learn
The Tap Code
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L8KN7AWhYk
Now for hiding footprints. When cruising the web, search engines record your search "data requests". They do this for various reasons but they are attached to your IP address and this info is stored and shared with the US government. So maybe covering your tracks is a good idea as you don't want to give them more ammo than they already have. The first issue is that you have to switch to Firefox as it isn't owned by Microsoft (who also is part of the Big Brother club). If you haven't got it yet, go get it here http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ and put it on every operating system you have. When you have it installed, right click on the Firefox tab in top left corner and then click on "Addons" under the "Tools" menu.
Under Search bar, type in the following plugins for Firefox
• BetterPrivacy (Removes persistent cookies from flash stuff >> *.sol)
• NoScript (blocks Javascript)
• AdBlock Plus (blocks Ads) (Subscribe to Easylist and Fanboy's List)
• Element Hider for Adblock Plus
• Ghostery (tracking pixels)
• TACO (More adblocking)
• Refcontrol
• WorldIP (know your country, know your rights)
• Flagfox
• GoogleSharing (GoogleProxy, i use it because Google is censored where i live, anonymizes the
search) - Scroogle.org is also a very viable (and worthwhile) alternative
• User Agent Switcher: Sends bogus browser identity to servers
• Optimize google: Allows to block loads of scum google uses to track searchs.
• Outernet explorer (MacOS) : Searches for a whole pile of shit on the net every 10 seconds or so,
ensures anyone tapping packets will have a hell of a time.
• https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere : automatically loads https on a site if avaliable.
You'll no longer see popups when you brows and some of these plugins will ask you to set parameters to your likings. You will have eliminated most of your tracks by just doing this process
Thanks, Knuckle! This is great info!