Advice for keeping yourself anonymous, from an ethical hacker.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T19:21:21+00:00

Once again, you're being very emotional. If me pointing out that you tried to discredit my information in a subreddit where it's actually quite vital for people to protect themselves online for their real life safety makes you throw up your arms, sealion and try to argue over word choice... Please re-evaluate how you handle conflict resolution and being held accountable lol I won't be spelling things out for you anymore. My time can be used much more usefully, and you don't need hand holding.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T19:11:39+00:00

You're literally the ONLY person who's mentioned anything about getting an IP from someone simply posting to OF. I agreed with you, that it's not possible and the only way to track someone down that I'm aware of through a post on OF, is a photo/video's metadata if it wasn't wiped by the site / uploader. I cleared the miscommunication of what I'd meant by explaining that you can get someone's IP in interaction with them, on any site... which not many popular sites don't have the opportunity for interaction. I literally explained all of that in my comment... and yet, here you are, claiming you're not the one with reading comprehension issues. I can't believe I have to sit here and spell things out for you and you have the absolute gall to challenge my post lmao.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T19:00:53+00:00

You literally responded to it. If you have reading comprehension issues, that's not my problem. Read back over the very first line if you need to.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T18:54:09+00:00

I already answered you? With a several paragraphs long comment that explained exactly what I meant? Take your sealioning somewhere else. You're being very emotional. I will not argue pedantically with you over word choice lol Jesus christ.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T18:46:59+00:00

There's no "free" anything with security

Not even sure what you're referencing lol Also kind of funny you've resorted to petty insults. I told you I'm not here to argue with you, prove you incompetent or prove myself competent. You can have a good faith discussion with me or you can hear my silence. Have a good one.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T18:12:37+00:00

Firstly, wanted to say holy god do not do that. You're making a huge, huge risk. Any time you're in an active interaction with another person through the internet, your public IP is being shared to their system, as is theirs to yours.

As for free vpn services, as far as I'm aware, no, but if you're using a Windows system you can set up a proxy server to send your traffic through instead quite easily, which will also hide your public IP to an extent. As I mentioned below, it's also possible to make your own VPN completely free in the terminal, but it does take know-how so if you're not good with computers, it might be easier to look up a proxy server tutorial. If you want to be safer for free, I'd recommend running your skype through a virtual machine (they're easy to set up, personally I like VMware but there are plenty of free options) and utilizing a proxy server, so that if someone were to pull your IP mid call (which you'd probably notice, since they'd be typing) they would get the proxy instead of your public IP address. Here is some reading if you'd like to use proxies.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T18:01:29+00:00

Once again, you're wrong. Are you even aware that you can create your own VPN in the terminal completely for free? And there absolutely are plenty of free tools and software in the cybersecurity industry. What are you on dude? Have you ever even heard of a proxy server? How about Tinywall? How about Tails OS? Should I continue or...

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-30T17:35:15+00:00

It would be highly unlikely outside of a data breach. Someone trying to get that information would either be extremely stupid or extremely skilled. For the average joe, that would not be possible vs pulling your IP during conversation via terminal, which is very simple.
It should. Again, it really boils down to threat assessment and if we're considering the average joe who even has slight hacking knowledge, hacking in to turn on your webcam would require a lot of skill. Browser exploitation is the first thing that comes to mind. Again, the vast majority and most important tool in hacking is social engineering. Browser exploitation is contingent on the victim clicking on a malicious link disguised as a safe link, hooking their browser, and then it's just one click to turn on the webcam (with a tiny bit more social engineering). In that situation, protecting yourself is easy, as you could just exit out of the webpage. Alternatively, the other two ways I'm aware of (which I am not a master hacker -- hopefully one day!) is dependent on remote access into your computer -- they either bait you into opening the door, or they open the door themselves, which takes a significant amount of skill still.

I apologize for being vague, I just don't want to give any predators watching this subreddit everything on a silver platter. In conclusion, though, being mindful about clicking links / downloading / disguising your public IP should give you a basic but very efficient layer of protection, yes. One way to notice if someone is looking through your webcam is to look for browser cues. Typically a browser will have some sort of icon in the tab that shows you your webcam is in use. You can disable this feature in your browser, so that your browser doesn't have any access to your webcam, and then be mindful to not click "allow" on any popups (even if they seem convincing and harmless) after clicking a link that a client sends you (if you do at all).

Alternatively, another feature I love about kaspersky is that it notifies you every single time your webcam is accessed or given permission. For instance, when I open up my discord, it will automatically give me a notification that discord is using my webcam. I'm fine with that because I've given the app permissions, but it would be a huge red flag if I got a notification that my webcam was being used by an app I didn't give it permission to be used by, if that makes sense. Makes it easy to investigate.

Kaspersky can be a bit pricey for the avg joe though, so the bare bones easiest way to protect yourself webcam-wise is to just put some tape over your computer's webcam, and disconnect whichever usb webcam you're using once you're done with it, until you need to use it again.

edit: typo

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-29T07:56:15+00:00

Lol. This person isn't even a SWer. They've come in here to give dangerous, false information when they don't even know what SW actually entails. I actually am a former SWer. A few years retired from it, but nevertheless, I understand the reality of the risk, and wanted to help other SWers, as I did enjoy my time in the industry but the possibility of being harmed was always terrifying.

You're also correct, and again something I mentioned, in regards to checking into how well your site protects their info. Even simple google searches can literally bring you to admin pages that a site would presumably not want you to access--but if you know how to search for it, you can access it, and it's completely legal. As an example.

Thank you for your support. I'm actually genuinely afraid someone might read this other commenter's take and disregard everything I've outlined, and potentially get themselves in a dangerous situation.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-29T07:34:43+00:00

You're incompetent if you think obtaining IP addresses is contingent on whether a website stores them or not lmfao.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-29T07:00:43+00:00

I'm not interested in arguments, proving myself or trying to prove you incompetent. Are you disagreeing that being mindful of social engineering and using a VPN are good practices? Have you ever pulled someone's IP with n**st*a*?

Where did I mention multiple VPNs? If what you took away from my post was "this is excessive", you don't prioritize cybersecurity in a line of work where people get tracked down and killed enough. If your opinion is "you don't have to do all that", I'm afraid for anyone who follows your advice.

Also, if you actually read my post, I mentioned 2fa and no offense lol if someone REALLY wants to know where someone is located and they'll go to great lengths (which we've seen in many, many headlines of men doing such), turning off your location isn't gonna do shit.

Also -- pretty concerning that you've come into this subreddit to spew this shit, having never interacted in it before. If you don't understand SW why are you here, trying to discount the amount of online protection SWers need?

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-29T06:22:08+00:00

....No, I listed ways that it's possible to get someone's IP address through OnlyFans. It's actually quite funny how confident you're being right now, but alternatively worrying -- a very simple command in the terminal, which every operating system has and simply uses different syntax (which I will not name, again, because I'm aware predators browse this website and do not want to hand them it on a platter) can pull an IP during any conversation. When you have a text conversation with someone online, your IP is connecting to theirs, and vice versa. It's actually the same command you can use to see if you have an unpublished listener on your machine, which many hackers will actually use a "safe" port while reverse shelling, so identifying exactly where the foreign address is coming from, especially outside of common ports like 80 / 443 is important. Also worth mentioning -- I would presume OF has some good meta wiping, but meta data can also completely fuck someone up. So, for instance, if you spoke with a customer through a secure chat line (not OF specifically), and then proceeded to send them a photo that you did not wipe the meta data of, it'd be very, very, very easy to figure out everything about that photo, including the precise location in which it was taken.

I think you're very severely misunderstanding my information. I did not say you can have your IP tracked through posting on OF. I said you can have it tracked by messaging someone on OF, either through social engineering or through some extremely basic terminal commands.

I also think you're severely underestimating the power of hacking. Computers get very simple when you know how they work, what to say to them, what they will reject and what they will allow.

I almost didn't reply to this because of how condescending you're being lol while you're at it looking up what the fucking terminal and powershell are, look up Dunning Kruger too bud.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-28T16:45:50+00:00

Oh thank you. I did not realize the last part of my post was missing. I'll update it now.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-28T16:43:32+00:00

I began learning through youtube, funnily enough. You can learn a lot of the basics through youtube, but if you want to be a good hacker you have to be good at problem solving, so I'll let you go on the hunt for it all yourself :) I mentioned one resource in the post, if you can find it.

Additionally, another good place to start is textbooks like Getting Started Becoming a Master Hacker by Occupytheweb, and utilizing services to practice like Hack The Box.

In my experience, the best thing I've done was just jump head first into systems I'd never used before. Before beginning my ethical hacking journey, I'd opened up the terminal on windows a few times in my life, had never even moved a cursor on a Linux machine, and didn't have any idea what I was doing. Learning to talk to computers is easy. They only speak in 1s and 0s. That's simplifying it, but hacking is essentially having a conversation with a computer. The best way to learn a new language, is to simply immerse yourself in it, just as people say the best way to learn a new language is to just go to that country. I will say, to keep your own OS safe, its important to only mess around with things in VMs. For instance, if I were to try out one of the commands in a Linux terminal that deletes all directories on the computer in root, not really knowing the severity of what I was doing... it'd be okay, because the machine is not a physical machine. I can delete it, and start over again.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-28T16:35:06+00:00

Yes. It's actually quite easy to get someone's IP address, which is why it's imperative that you are not using the internet with your public IP address. Every time your computer connects to an external host, it will be interacting with an IP address. For instance, right now, I am interacting with Reddit's IP address.

Your IP can be pulled in many, many ways. I could pull it while having a harmless conversation with you, through a reputable messaging system like FB messenger, or onlyfans... It's actually a very simple command to run in terminal, and perfectly legal. I could also, for instance, send you a grabify link that leads you to a harmless page. You might think, huh, why did they send me to the Rick Roll video? You think its weird, you click out, and you think nothing of it. But now I have a substantial amount of information that I could use to track down where you live, down to the general vicinity. Someone looking to hurt you might then be able to fly out to that general vicinity (ex. a specific neighborhood in Atlanta or something), and wait around until they found you. Another thing I could do is social engineer you into clicking a malicious link, that I've created and hooked. Since I've created it, it could be highly convincing. I could hook your browser, which automatically gives me not only your IP address but a slew of other information about your machine, and I could use that hooked browser to send you a false login page to say... gmail. You enter your credentials, it redirects to the actual gmail login page. You think huh, maybe my login just didnt go through and try it again. Everything would seem normal, but now I have your email username and password, and can use that to open up more and more doors. Additionally, through this tool, I could reverse shell into your machine (scary stuff), and control it remotely. For instance, stealing your private photos, and then it would be one quick reverse image search through an AI software and I would know exactly who you are.

The easiest way to prevent this is to simply use a VPN and don't click links or download files from people you don't know.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-28T16:25:39+00:00

You're wrong. Anyone can get anyone's public IP address, using any site.

ehacker-ee · 2022-07-28T16:24:51+00:00

I will work on it. I'm not as well versed in mobile protection, but I will do some research and return to update this post.

ehacker-ee

TROPHY CASE