Usenet Explorer

What would be the easiest or bet method to hide my downloading from other people?

I already know the dutch government already monitors and records email, and other internet activities. So probably also the usenet.
They say for anti-criminality and anti-terrorism and so on.
Now one minister is talking about forbidding of downloading of software and music.
what i thus think is that they will use the recorded and to be recorded future data that comes to my ip address, and then they will say something like the usual " if you don't have anything to hide, then why should you bother" etc. etc.
So it might be interesting to have some system to keep everything anonymous.
There already systems to encrypt the download data, or make things anonymous. However, i have no idea what would be the best things to do.
So, u have any ideas?

I've been pondering the exact same thing myself the past few days. I'm already using Tor and if I could get the damn settings figured out, I could route UE through it. It's works as expected for HTTP but I'm having trouble setting up the proxy in UE and Alex is a bit slim on the documentation for proxies right now. I wish I knew what did what in the proxies dialogue, to be honest. If only he'd write a tutorial...

There must be other ways, I'm sure. SSL is the first step but not always available with every server. However, I'm looking into this myself so, two heads are better than one.

as to proxies it is all very simple, if you use a single proxy you can fill "local" proxy, then to check "relay through local proxy", i you need a proxy per news server you check "access proxies" and fill access proxy for the servers you need.

SSL is now maybe the fastest solution, the servers supporting SSL without additional surcharge are e.g. UNS and Ngroups, it appears Ngroups are using UNS as their US server (article numbers are the same) and they also have another server in Amsterdam, so maybe NGroups are preferrable, their current retention is 117 days. In the past NGroups (the are a reseller) used servers of the company which bought NewsHosting, if they are using the same company it means it bought UsenetServer as well, but I have no idea if it is true. From US their NL server is slower, but it has different article numbers than their US UNS clone server.

Thanks for the answers.
I will probably step over to another server with ssl support like you supported. I will postpone it somewhat because i have a 1 year subscription for another pay server ( ). First will check out when it ends.
But if the new law really sets in of course i only will use ngroups then of course ( ).
I will thus first use ssl, and maybe if possible also the proxy. However i am not at all an expert in proxies. Sometimes even wonder if all of them are save, because owned by some other party. Maybe i better go to a commercial proxy company. And likely the speed is not good.

One week point however is that the newsservers could be obliged by government organisations to disclose information about my downloading. But maybe that is no problem as the newsservers don't log information (at least that is what i assumed).
If the SSL connection does not disclose who i am connecting to (so which news server) and that the data is encrypted, then nobody knows which payserver i use i guess (or at least i hope). Then maybe "they" can only figure out how much i download, and not from whom, or what kind of data it is.
Thangs again.

I think in the Netherlands you don't have much to worry about, since the country has hundreds of years of good history, you are the last to be hit if at all.

alex wrote:as to proxies it is all very simple, if you use a single proxy you can fill "local" proxy, then to check "relay through local proxy",

Well spin my nipple nuts and send me to Alaska. Now it's working but after several different combinations of trying settings yesterday it refused to budge. I say refused - it was downloading but it would not through Tor. Now it is so all is well.

alex wrote:i you need a proxy per news server you check "access proxies" and fill access proxy for the servers you need.

I'm not able to select 'Access proxy' because it's always been greyed out. I wondered about this and was going to mention it at some point after more testing but seeing how I got the proxy working, I'm going to mention it now.

alex wrote:SSL is now maybe the fastest solution... ...it appears Ngroups are using UNS as their US server (article numbers are the same) and they also have another server in Amsterdam, so maybe NGroups are preferrable, their current retention is 117 days.

Ngroups have only one SSL capable server, the other two are standard. I see decent speeds through SSL though and I'm thinking it's better to use it anyway because the other two servers have spotty throughput while SSL seems more stable. Maybe there aren't as many people using it as opposed to the other two.

Now for a couple of requests:

1. I'd like to see a button to enable/disable the proxy so I can place it on my toolbar and acess it much quicker and easier than entering Properties.

2. Now is the tricky part. Going through a proxy relies on the goodwill of others allowing their machines to relay connections. Normally (non-Tor) I will have a total of 100 tasks available to run at any one time. This is fine combined with a 20 meg connection. However, any proxy will almost always not be capable to matching your normal speed so I'd like to have a toolbar button I can click to set the tasks to a lower number. This way I don't let UE attempt to choke the donated bandwidth of someone else's connection and with the slower speeds, fewer will time out.

A button for both of these settings would be immensely useful to me but the more I think about it - why not just have one. One button called 'Secure mode' or something which enables the proxy and adjusts settings to something reasonable that won't try to hammer the (donated) network supplied by those who seek to promote anonymity. I could see UE combined with something like Tor as marketed as a secure anonymous newsreader with encryption from user all the way to server. It might be a selling point given a decent enough tutorial. Additionally, my ISP's server will only allow me to download from it if it can authenticate properly (i.e. through their network - not appearing to come from Germany, France, USA and Czechoslovakia as I am at the moment. It would be nice to enable and disable particular servers in secure mode because there's no point in letting all those attempted connections run when they will always spit out an error.

P.S. I've just switched to UE and noticed I'm downloading from news.ssl.Ngroups.NET through Tor. SSL through Tor sounds pretty secure to me.

so NGroups netherlands server doesn't support SSL then, but their UNS server does.

As to the greyed box you need to check "Access proxies" check box on the top of the proxies list control, the purpose is you can disable all per server proxies at once.

I'm not sure there will be toolbar buttons managing proxies, it is further clogging of the interface, very few users download through proxy and need to switch them off at will at the same time.

Just SSL is enough, it is not possible to break through it. relaying may affect download speed.

bassie wrote:I will postpone it somewhat because i have a 1 year subscription for another pay server

Check out Usenet-News. They are the sister site to Ngroups.NET but they sell block accounts. This means you can use your current server but for those times when you really need to download bomb-making instructions or other terrorist-related activities you can go through Usenet-News. They have an SSL server available.

bassie wrote:I will thus first use ssl, and maybe if possible also the proxy. However i am not at all an expert in proxies. Sometimes even wonder if all of them are save, because owned by some other party. Maybe i better go to a commercial proxy company. And likely the speed is not good.

Try the proxy. Tor is free so you have nothing to lose. Read the FAQ and decide if it's what you need. The basic idea is that you begin with an encrypted connection with someone else's computer, who then sends the data through another computer, to another and so on. Only the last computer in the chain knows where you sent the request to but does not know who sent it. It's encrypted all the way there and all the way back again. If you're paranoid, put on your tin foil hat and right-click the Tor icon and select 'New Identity' to switch to an entirely new chain of Tor servers.

In addition:

Tor FAQ wrote:Tor will reuse the same circuit for new TCP streams for 10 minutes, as long as the circuit is working fine. (If the circuit fails, Tor will switch to a new circuit immediately.)

After 10 minutes, Tor will automatically switch paths to a new one through different servers.

bassie wrote:One week point however is that the newsservers could be obliged by government organisations to disclose information about my downloading. But maybe that is no problem as the newsservers don't log information (at least that is what i assumed).
If the SSL connection does not disclose who i am connecting to (so which news server) and that the data is encrypted, then nobody knows which payserver i use i guess (or at least i hope). Then maybe "they" can only figure out how much i download, and not from whom, or what kind of data it is.

This could not happen with Tor because there is no central server. In fact it is more secure than a commercial service who could be pressured with legal action into revealing logs and data. A Tor node could be run by me or my neighbour. With several hops in the chain all encrypted then how would they ever find out unless you were worth the trouble in the first place. I suppose it depends on how naughty you want to be on the net. Of course, if you were to post or download something highly questionable in the first place you'd need to use a free server where you hadn't used a credit card or similar to buy access.

alex wrote:As to the greyed box you need to check "Access proxies" check box on the top of the proxies list control, the purpose is you can disable all per server proxies at once.

Ah, I missed that one. Not that I need it because I either want the proxy on or off - not half and half.

alex wrote:I'm not sure there will be toolbar buttons managing proxies, it is further clogging of the interface, very few users download through proxy and need to switch them off at will at the same time.

I wasn't asking for anything major - just the option in Customise->Commands->All Commands to add a button for it, even a simple text button with no icon will be enough. There's no need to make it a large feature but would be nice to have there for those who would use it. I suppose it depends if enough people are interested in using UE in this way. I've been interested in security for a long while now, beginning with PGP way back in the early 90s. Now I've finally got around to getting it all set up.

[quote="alex"]so NGroups netherlands server doesn't support SSL then, but their UNS server does.

So it might be that the UNS server is fast enough in my case. Now i can download up to 8 Mb/sec because of internet speed limitations of my isp.
Probably that is no problem to reach nowadays, because i hear people already speaking of 20 Mb/sec.
(Funny though that i cannot find the message that the netherlands server does not support ssl, but i just believe you.)

With Ngroups you have to login to your account to activate SSL. Upon activating, you are given server and port details. This is effectively a third server you can use and is separate from the other two. SSL does not activate on the other two. This is why I think it appears faster for me - not as many people are using it I would guess.

I'd also like to mention that Ngroups isn't particularly fast for me anyway. On a 20 Mbps (bits) I get less than 1 MBps (bytes) when I should get around at least 2 MBps (bytes). My theoretical max is 2.5 MBps but accounting for overheads, just over 2 is OK. The SSL server is proving to be the most stable in higher speeds in the long run.

Josef K wrote:With Ngroups you have to login to your account to activate SSL. Upon activating, you are given server and port details. This is effectively a third server you can use and is separate from the other two. SSL does not activate on the other two. This is why I think it appears faster for me - not as many people are using it I would guess.

I'd also like to mention that Ngroups isn't particularly fast for me anyway. On a 20 Mbps (bits) I get less than 1 MBps (bytes) when I should get around at least 2 MBps (bytes). My theoretical max is 2.5 MBps but accounting for overheads, just over 2 is OK. The SSL server is proving to be the most stable in higher speeds in the long run.

Maybe in the future they will have another server also SSL, anyway 1MB/sec (so megabytes/sec) would be ok for me. Looks promising, thanks for the information.

from the server machine, US server gives 1.4-1.5 MBytes per second, EU server about 600KBytes per second, max download speed on the connection i think 2.5 MBytes per sec so yes the connection is not fully saturated (checked with 5 tasks each), if they have also SSL server separate probably 3 servers could saturate it. it is difficult to tell where the traffic is capped.

Ngroups.NET FAQ wrote:Q: How many simultaneous connections can I have to your servers?
A: You are allowed 12 simultaneous connections to our server system, (total, not 12 per server), to increase speed and reliability.

I have Ngroups in a subset with 12 max tasks. I've used many more than that before but in the end I really wouldn't like to get my account terminated. I haven't seen anywhere near speeds to max out my connection through Ngroups and I'm not so sure their speed caps are fully removed as they state. I used to have far higher speeds to them before but then they slowed considerably. Downloading overnight gets me everything I want, though, so it's not too much of an issue. That is, until I see something I want now and it's beyond my ISPs retention (which I max out easily) then it's aggravating to wait for the sometimes 200-300k/s at peak times.

when i checked UNS on backup server computer - the speed is 1000KBytes/sec, NGroups about 600KBytes/sec

on the current server computer with UNS I get 2.35KBytes/sec, with NGroups the speed fluctuates around 1.4KBytes/sec (I'm measuring 5 tasks, NGroups their US server news.wwwspace.net).

it might be network conditions as well, but it appears on both computers UNS is 40% faster.

at least it is what i see right now.

if i have an opportunity i'll try to ask them what it means, maybe the servers are synchronized as to article numbers with UNS, but there is still something in between.