[jerheinze]

> Tor is far more fingerprintable than people think it is

You seem to have no idea about the existence of pluggable transports.[1][2]

> and its riddled with adversaries and malware.

Yes, and so is I2P... Freenet... the Internet?

> Even if you're good you have a separate problem now: Keeping the USG et al from painting a target on you.

Isn't that an argument for using Tor? As Mike Perry (who works now on the vanguard proposal implementation) puts it, "we want enough people to actually use Tor Browser such that it becomes less interesting that you're a Tor user. We have plenty of academic research and mathematical proofs that tell us quite clearly that the more people use Tor, the better the privacy, anonymity, and traffic analysis resistance properties will become."

> Just use a burner iPad and wipe it frequently. If you're truly paranoid light up a DigitalOcean droplet with a pre-paid credit card and a false name and install OpenVPN on it make an image and cycle your IP.

Your IP will be known since you connect directly using your IP to the droplet. Also doesn't protect you from browser fingerprinting which alone may have leaked enough information to identify you.

[1] : https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports.html.en

[2] : https://www.pluggabletransports.info/ (really good folks work on them, and we should appreciate the amount of work that they put in obfs research)

[3pt14159]

I've been on HN for almost 10 years. You aren't going to get a cut and dry answer from most pros because most pros aren't going to post things in public forums. Pluggable transports have nothing to do with it. I've actually helped defenders against Tor based attackers. I've de-anon'd them. It was easy as fucking shit because most attackers are dumb and the Tor browser isn't 0day proof or as network isolated as people think it is.

Who is your adversary and what are the costs you are willing to bear to hide from them?

There are very few answers to that question that come out with: "Use Tor"

For the 99.9% of adversaries having a wipeable iPad will stop browser fingerprinting and switching up IPs or cafes will stop IP tracking. It wont stop network attacks, but you'll be pretty safe from 0days. For most journalists (or even drug dealers) it's the right approach.

The rest just gets you more heat than its worth.

[i_feel_great]

"For the 99.9% of adversaries having a wipeable iPad will stop browser fingerprinting and switching up IPs or cafes will stop IP tracking."

Down my way, the streets are littered with cameras and I suspect they can match time and IP address and id you easily. This is the same in most industrialized nations probably.

(Not hiding from anybody here, just a thought experiment)

Edit: Very frequently the Police will ask for drivers who have in-car cameras when there is a crime or accident. And a lot of them do have cameras. In Australia.

[jerheinze]

> having a wipeable iPad will stop browser fingerprinting

Huh??

[emj]

The theory is that making your computer less finger printable and hence less unique is near impossible compared to a iPad you wipe on every use (you still have to use the iPad for other things). https://panopticlick.eff.org/ is pretty scary I'm almost always unique unless I do a trick like that.

[squarefoot]

An iPAd or any mobile device, including Android or Windows Mobile ones, runs mostly off closed software and drivers. You can wipe it completely but if the network device firmware instructs it to send a small magic packet somewhere to tell which terminal is that and where to find it, you're lost. If it had eavesdropping malware on it, it will be installed back with the next upgrade. Unless one can set up packet inspection and filtering on a mobile network, and manufacturers release everything (hardware+firmware+software) as open source, there's no way to have security on any mobile device, including those sold as super secure. This sadly also applies to bench PCs too, although the choice of the OS to install and being able to implement filtering lessens the problem just a bit.

[angry_octet]

And while ios might be a harder target for malware, Safari has plenty of problems -- such as inability to block JS unless needed, no adblocking. And iOS is quite chatty, sends all sorts of info back to Apple. No potential to filewall at all.