Over the years, many platforms have presented themselves as a “pillar of privacy on the internet”, when they turned out to be catastrophic, real Trojan horses that initially take the form of anonymous communication, but which did everything but to preserve anonymity, after all.
Anonymity: what do you need to know about anonymous communication?
As seen in the article on which VPN to choose, the one already “enhances” anonymous communication on the internet.
Already this will help a lot in not being tracked, but it is not enough, because it is also necessary to know the correct platform.
You will have happened to write something on Facebook or on WhatsApp and perhaps to review something related to what you wrote on WhatsApp.
For example: if you talked to your mother about the vacuum cleaner and a certain model on WhatsApp, you could have advertising on Facebook (since both platforms are always from the same company: META).
This already makes it clear that advertising tracking could also be intercepted by some attacker to retrieve the data.
This article is not meant to “be shady” or anything like that, but simply if the communication is about very private and personal things, knowing where and how to move; it may seem obvious, but it is not.
Having good surfing habits already does 70% of the work.
Anonymity on the internet and anonymous communication: a devastating prerequisite
You can use VPN, you can use DNS, you can even create a virtual machine inside another virtual machine to have the double VPN, and triple if you place it in the last one. TOR Browser or other forms of VPN embedded with the Browser (Bravefor example it also has one based on TOR), but remember:
100% anonymity and 100% anonymous communication on the internet does not exist!
It is hard for most to accept, I can understand that, but very often we forget that the internet was born as a military network, not as a civilian network.
It may seem trivial, but it is to understand that this effect of the “military control” of the past now applies more peacefully through advertising tracking or various trackers, but understanding the past helps to understand the present.
That said, all is not lost: even if 100% anonymity is not possible to achieve, there are still platforms that are “as anonymous as possible” and that help on the privacy front.
Anonymity: which chat platforms to choose?
Text chats
Session: available for all platforms, this platform does not require e-mail or telephone number, the application will create a temporary session so that you can have as much anonymity as possible during anonymous communication, the platform is decentralized.
Status: as above, even Status does not require a telephone number or email for registration, it uses a Waku protocol through a decentralized network Peer to peerwhich removes centralized messages from third parties.
Signal: centralized platform with an appearance very similar to that of more well-known chat platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp. It asks for the phone number during registration.
Theema: available for Android and iOS, still missing a Desktop version (Windows, Linux and Mac). Although centralized, it does not require a telephone number to register. His shop accepts Bitcoin.
Delta Chat: This anonymous communication platform is very special. It doesn’t have any real servers, but it uses a curious messaging system: a mail server system. In short: you can basically chat with anyone and on the other side, the other person doesn’t have to own Delta Chat.
The videochat
Brave Talk: private chat that requires the well-known Brave browser. Whoever creates the discussion lobby needs to have it installed, whoever joins can use other browsers.
Other alternatives that work the same way where you join with a lobby created on the spot that disappears when everyone disconnects are: Jami, Linphone And Jitsii.
E-mail providers
Protonmail: Certainly the most famous anonymity provider in circulation, a well-known Swiss company founded in 2013. It has an excellent spam filter, good two-factor protection and is available both as an App and in a Desktop version. It allows encrypted mail and can also be accessed via TOR networks.
Tutanota: email provider of a German company, emails from third parties are not accepted for registration, the user can use a wide range of native apps.
Disroot: Dutch mail provider, allows encrypted mails, with the ability to send them via your own application using a system PGP for data security.
Mailbox.org: Based in Germany, the user is allowed to use both desktop access and third party programs such as Thunderbird.
StartMail: based in the Netherlands, roughly similar to the German Mailbox.org.
Anonymous and anonymity communication: beyond the internet
Speaking of anonymity and anonymous communication, we often forget “the good old days”.
Basically, an analogue communication remains much, much more anonymous than an internet conversation.
Unfortunately, even the elderly have forgotten this.
So what tools to use for anonymity?
You will now see some analog communication alternatives, and here anonymity is much, much higher and in some cases interception is even impossible.
The best, however, I want to keep for last.
Postal mail: I challenge anyone to intercept such an asynchronous “conversation”, and here you can indulge in codes, puzzles, etc. I believe this method needs no introduction! Obviously, time is not “immediate”, as can be guessed.
Phone box: object now in disuse, if you are one of the very few lucky to still have one under the house, you can take advantage of it; even if the printouts show when the call was made, it is almost impossible to trace who made the call. It goes without saying that this method can have a considerable cost in terms of coins.
CB radio. Even if there is no “true” anonymity here, since you still have to have one, the communication system it is basically that of the videochat listed above, only with voice only, without packet switching and in a completely analog way; even if CB radio itself deserves a separate article.
Walkie Talkie: as can be guessed here is the limit of distance. Good Walkie Talkies even reach up to a range of 50km, so if you have friends who do not live very far away (subject to financial possibilities) it is a possibility to evaluate.
Remember that something similar can be done via Bluetooth, some apps such as Intercom for Android can transform the smartphone into a sort of Walkie Talkie via Bluetooth, but there are no Bluetooth repeaters so powerful as to cover certain distances.
Anonymous communication, I left it for last: the legendary FAX!
I know, this thing may seem prehistoric, if not downright “Jurassic”, yet curiously it is one of the tools with the highest anonymity rate that allows anonymous and even rapid communication.
Recently the Japanese authorities have declared their willingness not to want to abandon the fax, the “official” excuse is that “the upper floors do not want to adapt”.
Although not explicitly written in various articles on the internet the synchronous and immediate communication of the fax does not allow an interception. This is most likely the reason why in Japan they don’t want to get rid of it. The fax does not work with packet switching, it is an analog signal that passes through a wire (or cellular antenna).
Basically: from the printouts it is traceable that a phone call has been sent, not the content.
And this is precisely my advice for which the Japanese want to keep it: the FAX signal does not pass through various providers, via packets, roughly you know what turns it does and does only one.
You can even write (by hand) like a chat with your friend if you need to tell each other important things.
If you are wondering “but who uses the fax anymore?” or “how can I do if I no longer have a fixed line and my router does not have a twisted pair for the phone?”, just think that there are still 4G routers on the market with the possibility of inserting the cable RJ-11namely the landline phone cable.
For this operation you will obviously need a dedicated telephone SIM (there are offers from € 5 per month or a little more if you want to use it only for this) and the FAX in addition to making calls will also be able to send sheets, which obviously will do via the standard cellular network.
Anonymity: a reflection
At this point, however, a reflection spontaneously arises.
We assume that an old thing does not mean that it is automatically obsolete or unusable and the FAX itself is an example.
One wonders if the abandonment of more analogue tools in an increasingly digitized world is not because “they are old”, but because they do not allow tracing (or limit it very much) in a society where control over the person is increasingly high, using the excuse of the “old age” of technology.
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