[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.