Monday 2 April 2012

My message to my fellow Brits. How to legally bypass 99% of the proposed Internet monitoring plans in the UK

Sorry, this is going to be a long-winded post.

So, lets get started.

We've all heard about the plans to monitor our Internet messages and communications in the UK!

Today, I'm going to tell you methods how to bypass this.

Why am I telling you this? To show the public just how ridiculous this law is, how easy it is to bypass and why this huge invasion will not be worth it for the police. Hopefully if parliament is educated about these methods, they won't pass it.

Firstly, I'm going to explain my opinions on what and how they will implement this plan to monitor your communications.

A quote from - [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17576745

"The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and terrorism"

"Tackling" this leads me to believe that home office will actively monitor data passing through your Internet service provider, looking for terrorists with the data they collect.

Fair enough you say, but think of it like this.

UK isps go through terabytes of data every second

This is where it gets scary. There is no way, at all, that this data will be monitored by humans. It will be an automated process. Probably a bot sifting through every message you type looking for "key words" "key phrases" which link you to terrorist organizations. (This is just my speculation of how the system will work, seems to be most logical as current government is making huge cut backs)

Do you want your details being sifted through? This is almost as insane as someone coming to your house and looking through every thing you have written. Ever.

One way you can protect yourself is with this add on for chrome and firefox released by the EFF (A company fighting for your freedom)

[3] https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

This add on will make all your popular sites send data in an encrypted form between you and the sites servers. Your Internet service provider will be able to see where the data is going (Example, facebook, email document sent to google servers) but they will not be able to read it. That's the important bit.

If you can see "https://" and not "http://" in the URL, then you know you're secure. (This is the method used for online banking, it is very hard to decrypt)

And, as the UK government continuously refuse to invest in the UKs Internet structure. Very few, if any of the sites you visit will be hosted in the UK. Even ebay.co.uk has its servers in North America.

Another way to protect yourself is when you set up your email and news client (Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook are some popular ones)

Use your email providers SSL ports. For example, gmail uses port 993 for SSL. This will encrypt your data from A to B making monitoring difficult.

The final method I will describe is purchasing a VPN (Virtual private network). VPNs are servers hosted abroad which "bounce" your data from another country to their destination.

You press send on an email? With a VPN The data gets sent through an encrypted tunnel from your Home to the server abroad where it is then sent to its destination.

Again, bypassing any monitoring.

In my opinion, The UK government is slowly destroying our Internet industry by implementing these laws.

Thursday 9 June 2011

Bitcoin Economic bubble ready to pop?

Taking a quick turn of my usual blogging angle i'm going to talk about the huge bitcoin economic "bubble" that has formed.

So, In case you haven't noticed. Bitcoins are a form of online currency and in the last week, their value has shot through the roof.

"Bitcoin mining" Using your GPU (or CPU) to solve hashes to produce bitcoins, has just become very profitable indeed. People with bitcoins are now easily selling them for $30 a piece. Many miners on youtube have made videos of them selling 200-300 bitcoins for thousands.

But, will their value hold? Is it wise to sell now, or wait another week for the value to increase? The truth is nobody knows, but a lot of experts are expecting the value of bitcoins to drop in the coming days.

The picture below shows  a comparison of the current bitcoin status to a previous economic bubble and the phases it goes through.