JonDo Help: VPN services and Proxies

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## VPN services and Proxies

### Additional safety with VPN services like Relakks, Steganos Anonym VPN, Perfect Privacy, Cyber Ghost VPN, XeroBank VPN, Linkideo, Ivacy...

JonDonym and Tor may be the best anonymization systems technically, but both share small restrictions from concept that should be considered when using them:

- Browser plugins for active contents (Java/Flash/Silverlight/ActiveX) must be blocked, e.g. by using JonDoFox. Otherwise, your PC's/router's true IP can be revealed by a website which secretly or visibly embeds such programs.
- While all web browsers do, some internet applications do not support HTTP/SOCKS proxy settings. They may then only be anonymized by the use of further software.

The combination of JonDo with a so-called VPN system (virtual private network) may slightly fix these restrictions: VPN software creates a single, encrypted connection to a certain VPN provider. This one accepts, similar to an access provider, your whole internet data traffic (also the separately encrypted JonDonym data traffic), and forwards it to the itnernet (or to JonDonym cascades, respective), while all users get the same exit IP address, similar to JonDonym. Of course, this provider may thereby observe your whole internet communication, except for what is transferred over JonDonym. Hence pay attention to choose a reputable VPN provider, in particular with a reputable company address and similar contact persons. If possible, you should also use a VPN software directly integrated in your internet router instead of executing a VPN program on your own computer. Thereby the provider's software cannot harm your computer. In addition to that, only the router then "knows" your real IP address, and active contents cannot read it any more. However, please note that active contents may still read a lot of data about your computer and network configuration. Moreover, in specific computer configurations or if the VPN connection shortly goes down, VPN programs that work without a separate user hardware sometimes "leak" connection data to the internet.

For web surfing, VPN services should not be used. On one hand, their hosts usually do not ensure that users also have an uniform appearance on the Web aside their IP address (see last chapter). The users are thus distinguishable and easily identifiable by merging the data. And on the other hand, a local observer on your network (ISP, WLAN) could guesstimate websites requested over VPN simply by analyzing size and timing of the encrypted VPN data stream. JonDonym and Tor are quite resilient against this attack (a scientific article which demonstrates the attack and lists experimental results is in preparation; the success rates are over 90% for VPNs). Moreover, VPN systems, as inherent to their functional principle, normally do not filter or replace your computer's TCP packets. They thereby do not protect you from TCP timestamp attacks like JonDonym and Tor. You should also keep in mind that VPN hosts can, unlike JonDonym and Tor, track and save every step of yours since they control all servers in the VPN. Nevertheless, protection by the VPN of a professional and reputable host is often better than no protection at all.

### Network proxies and web proxies

Proxy services are particularly famous for this kind of "anonymization on demand", besides the already mentioned services. They are literally "proxy PCs" which switch communication between your PC and the Internet. They relay your data traffic to the target and send the answer back to your PC so that the web site cannot see your IP address.

Unfortunately, proxies have a high susceptibility to misuse and user data theft: many proxies are PCs hijacked by hackers or criminals, or even exclusively offered for the purpose of user observation. Some automatically give your IP address away to the target webserver. Connections with proxies are almost always unencrypted, so that an eavesdropper on your connection could observe your surfing behavior. Moreover, the proxy operator can, of course, watch exactly what you are doing. Proxies offer thus, if at all, only weak protection from the website's host but not from third parties. Their usage is risky.

Huge lists of the so-called network proxies or "anonymous" proxies are offered for free download on the Internet and can be entered in most browsers without much of a hassle. Some software providers distribute programs with which these lists can be updated automatically. In addition to these proxies, there are webproxy services, Internet pages with a form field in which the user can input the target address that he want's to visit anonymously. The webproxy subsequently delivers the content of the requested website and automatically patches all links to use the webproxy when clicked. For using webproxy services the browser configuration does not have to be changed. Compared to network proxies, they have the disadvantage not to be able to replace each link correctly, in particular on web sites with JavaScript code. This makes it easier that the user IP address gets "leaked" to the web server, which the proxy should acutally prevent.

### Local proxies

The program JonDo works as a local proxy (pseudo proxy) directly on your PC. Just as with normal proxies your browser (or other applications on your PC configured for JonDo resp.) has to connect to it in order to access the Internet indirectly. But since JonDo runs on your own PC, instead of on a third party server, it is not affected by the generic proxy security flaws mentioned above. JonDo itself relays communication of your configured Internet applications over a multi-encrypted, direct TCP connection to a JonDonym mix cascade.

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