Stop using Internet Exploer, even with VPNs

Governments urge Internet Explorer users to switch browsers until fix found | ZDNet

This and many other articles are relaying the information that governments are encouraging users to move to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari until this Microsoft Internet explorer bug is fixed. The vulnerability seems to have been in every version of IE since 6 through the current version 11. It is a remote exploitation vulnerability, so attackers can use it to run arbitrary code on your computer, effectively “owning” it. There are some work arounds within IE that may prevent the attack, but for now it is much safer and easier to simply move to a different browser.

It is important to remember that using a VPN like Anonymizer Universal does NOT provide any protection against this kind of attack. This is an attack directly against the browser using the content you have “requested”. The attack is launched from the site you are visiting, so the hostile content would flow through the VPN unhindered. 

Anonymizer strongly encourages its users to move to Firefox, Safari, or Chrome, at least until this problem is resolved.

Lance Cottrell is the Founder and Chief Scientist of Anonymizer. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Yahoo to ignore IE 10 Do Not Track

From Declan's article on CNET.

The fight over the "do not track" flag continues.

In the latest version of Internet Explorer (version 10), Microsoft has made "do not track" the default setting. This makes tracking by websites an "opt in" rather than an "opt out" proposition. Privacy advocates have long favored this approach, but advertisers don't like it.

Yahoo feels so strongly about this that they say that they will ignore the Do Not Track (DNT) flag when coming from IE 10 browsers. The open source Apache web server is also going to come configured to ignore the IE 10 DNT flag.

So, even if you explicitly want Do Not Track, and would have gone in and manually enabled it, you will be tracked by Yahoo anyway.

Ironically, this means that if you actually want to not be tracked, you need to use a different browser and manually enable the setting.

I do appreciate the effort Microsoft, and shame on you Yahoo.

Reader question on privacy software

A reader of this blog recently emailed me to ask:

What s/w do you recommend to keep anonymous while using Gmail, IE, Outlook, and Facebook on a laptop?

This is actually a very tricky question because the nature of all of these tools, except Internet Explorer (IE), is to be associated with a visible and discoverable account and identity in the "cloud". I will discuss IE last and separately.

Gmail ties to your gmail and other Google accounts. Outlook ties to some existing email account at some email provider. Facebook is tied to your Facebook account and is explicitly designed for making your information public.

The profound question here is, what do we even mean by being anonymous using these services? I would argue that the best one can manage is to be pseudonymous; that is to maintain a persistent and visible pseudonym / alias which, while discoverable, is not associated with your true identity.

Fortunately Gmail and Facebook are free and typically do not require any real credentials to set up an account, and many of the free email providers work similarly. Using Anonymizer Universal (AU), and a browser with no history or cache to set up the accounts would ensure they were not connected to your real identity. It is important that the accounts never be accessed in any way except through AU, or they will be forever after associated with your real IP address. Furthermore, it is critical that the browser used is never used for any activity connected to your real identity, or the cookies and other digital detritus in your browser may allow these sites (or other folks) to tie the pseudonym to your other real name accounts.

IE is in many ways the easiest because there is no underlying account, but all the same rules apply. You need to ensure that you isolate your anonymous or pseudonymous activity from your real name activity.

For all of this activity a virtual machine can be a very effective tool. For example, if you use a Mac you can use a virtual machine running Windows or Linux for all of your alias activities and use the normal operating system for your real name activities. Similar tools exist for other operating systems.