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-<!--
- Copyright © 2016-2020 Soren Stoutner <soren@stoutner.com>.
-
- This file is part of Privacy Browser <https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser>.
-
- Privacy Browser is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
- it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
- (at your option) any later version.
-
- Privacy Browser is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
- GNU General Public License for more details.
-
- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- along with Privacy Browser. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. -->
-
-<html>
- <head>
- <meta charset="UTF-8">
-
- <link rel="stylesheet" href="../css/dark_theme.css">
- </head>
-
- <body>
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/vpn_key_blue_dark.png"> Proxies and Their Limits</h3>
-
- <p>There are two general categories of bad actors that want to infringe on the privacy of the web:
- malicious governments with access to ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and mega corporations that run social and advertising networks.
- Proxies like TOR (The Onion Router) and I2P (the Invisible Internet Project) are useful in protecting privacy from malicious governments (which spy on traffic in transit)
- but not from mega corporations (which embed malicious code on web servers).</p>
-
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/language_blue_dark.png"> Malicious Governments</h3>
-
- <p>Malicious governments often spy on their citizens to punish dissent or human rights activity.
- They commonly either operate the local ISPs or they can force them to disclose information showing every IP address that is visited by each user.
- Layered proxies are designed to defeat this infringement of privacy by encrypting the traffic from a user’s device and routing it through multiple servers on the internet
- before sending it on to the final destination.
- This means that no individual ISP, server, or website, can know both the <a href="https://ipleak.net">IP address of the user’s device</a> and the IP address of the final web server.
- Malicious governments and the ISPs they control cannot tell which web servers a user is accessing, although they can tell that the user is using a layered proxy service.
- In some parts of the world, using proxies could be construed as an evidence of illegal behavior (“If you didn’t have anything to hide you wouldn’t be encrypting your traffic”)
- and users could be punished because governments assume they are doing something that is prohibited. Thus, proxies can be helpful, but they aren’t a panacea.</p>
-
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/language_blue_dark.png"> Mega Corporations</h3>
-
- <p>When a user connects to a web server, the web server can see the user’s IP address.
- Although it isn’t a perfect science, IP addresses can be turned into physical addresses with a <a href="https://www.whatismyip.com/">fair amount of accuracy</a>.
- Small web servers typically rely on IP addresses to identify the location of the users visiting their site. Proxies are a good solution to mask the user’s location from these servers.
- But large mega corporations that own social media and advertising networks use a whole profile of information that is designed to track users across devices and IP addresses.
- These profiles employ a variety of techniques to identify users, including JavaScript, cookies, tracking IDs, and <a href="https://panopticlick.eff.org/">browser fingerprinting</a>.
- Because the vast majority of the websites on the internet either load an ad from one of the major networks or embed social media icons with their associated JavaScript,
- these corporations have built profiles for almost every online user and can track their internet activity across unrelated sites.</p>
-
- <p>They track every site that is visited, everything that is purchased, every credit card that is used to make a purchase, every address that items are shipped to,
- and the GPS metadata of every picture that is uploaded to the internet.
- They build a profile of a user’s age, gender, marital status, address, political affiliations, religious affiliations, family circumstances, number of pets,
- and everything else they can get their hands on.
- They even buy up databases of credit card transactions at local stores, so they can track the off-line purchasing patterns of the users in their profiles.
- Because they already have much more accurate address information about a user than an IP address discloses, proxies provides no real privacy protection against mega corporations.</p>
-
- <p>The single best privacy protection against mega corporations is to browse the web with JavaScript disabled, followed by blocking ad networks, disabling cookies and DOM storage,
- and using a browser that is difficult to fingerprint.</p>
-
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/open_in_browser_blue_dark.png"> Using Proxies</h3>
-
- <p>Despite their limitations, proxies can be useful in some circumstances.
- <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.torproject.android">Tor</a> and <a href="https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.i2p.android.router/">I2P</a>
- have Android apps that make it easy to use their proxy networks. When proxying is turned on in Privacy Browser, the app bar will have a light blue background instead of the default light grey.
- Because traffic is being routed through several proxy nodes, using a layered proxy is often much slower than connecting directly to the internet.</p>
-
- <img class="center" src="images/tor.png">
- </body>
-</html>
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projects / PrivacyBrowserAndroid.git / blobdiff