The browser Mozilla Firefox version 22.0 will block third-party cookies by default. Content from a third-party origin will get only permission to set cookies if its origin already has at least one cookie set. (see: The New Firefox Cookie Policy). This policy will potentially block cookies from advertising networks that are used to track the browsing habits of users. Google, the main sponsor of Mozilla, is not affected by this policy because Firefox gets a Google cookie at first start.

Is blocking of third-party cookies useful to avoid the tracking of browsing habits of users by third parties? Let's make a small test. We installed a fresh Firefox and disabled third-party cookies in the configuration. This configuration setting is a little bit more restrictive than the new Firefox cookie policy, but suitable for our demonstration. Afterwards we opened 3 websites and took a look at stored cookies.

1. Zeit.de (online portal of a German newspaper)

   

   All cookies were classified as first-party content but some of them are used by third-party servers.

   • The cookie "rsi_segs" is used by www.audiencescience.com for behavioral based advertising.
   • "wt3_eid" and "wt3_sid" are used by WebTrekk.
   • The cookies "__umta" ... "__umtz" are used by Google Analytics.
   • The cookie "_chartbeat2" is used by www.chartbeat.com for real-time analysis of website vistors.

   The cookies are generated and send to the tracking service by Javascript. Because these cookies are used to transfer information to third parties it is a violation of user preferences.

2. Zalando.de (commercial webshop)

   

   Zalando.de uses Javascript generated cookies too. But additional we found two cookies for the sub-domain "track.zalando.de". This domain is a DNS alias for "zalando-de01.webtrekk.net", an external server not related to Zalando.de. By using the DNS alias for loading a 1x1 pixel transparent image (webbug), it became first-party status and was able to set the cookies "wteid_xxxxx" and "wtsid_xxxxx".

3. Heise.de (German IT news portal)

   

   Heise.de is using WebTrekk too. Both methods of Zeit.de (1.) and Zalando.de (2.) are combined:

   • If Javascript is active, the cookies "wt3_eid" und "wt3_sid" are created with Javascript.
   • If Javascript was disabled, a 1x1 pixel webbug will be loaded from the sub-domain "prophet.heise.de". This sub-domain is a DNS alias for "heise02.webtrekk.net" and is used to get first-party status for the webbug. The webbug sets the cookies "wteid_xxxxx" and "wtsid_xxxxx" for tracking.

Conclusion

Tracking services are using sophisticated methods to get first-party status for their tracking elements to avoid blocking. The tracking services above are only small examples. Yahoo! Web Analytics sets a one-year, first-party, persistent cookie that includes a unique visitor ID number and is able to track 99,9% of website visitors.

It is not possible, to use first-party cookies for cross-domain tracking. These cookies are only valid and accessible within the context of one domain. But by using additional tracking features, it is possible to link tracking data of multiple domains together. WebTrekk collects Geo-location by IP address, screen size and color depth of your monitor, inner size of browser window, your preferred language, browser name and version, operating system and version, settings of Java (ON/OFF), Javascript (ON/OFF) and cookies (ON/OFF). It is possible to calculate a high quality browser fingerprint with this data. The browser fingerprint will be unique for most user and it may be possible to use it for linking tracking data over multiple domains.

To avoid tracking of your browsing habits by third parties we recommend the blocking of all cookies and Javascript. Enable session cookies or Javascript only for trusted websites if required to get it working as expected. Delete all cookies after leaving the website or at least by closing your browser. JonDoFox and JonDoBrowser are configured for this behavior. During your surf session you can delete cookies with click on the menu item "Tools - Clear Recent History" or you may hit CTRL-ALT-DEL.

More than 80% of Internet user dislike the tracking of their online behavior. But tracking is expanding more and more. Popular Web sites are far more aggressive in their tracking practices.

More Elements on Popular Websites

The project Web Privacy Census of University of California is watching the state of internet tracking and privacy over years. An increasing usage of tracking features was documented. For an example we want to show only the usage of cookies by the 100 most popular websites:

The project observed statistically significant increases in the amount of usage of sophisticated HTML5 features like DOMstorage and other EverCookies for tracking. 38% of popular websites were using EverCookies techniques in Oct. 2012. EverCookies are not easy to manage and remove by users like third-party cookies.

Because it is easy to block third-party content with modern browser more third-party aggregators are working to hide their presence in a first-party site by serving content from what are or appear to be first party servers. This approach makes it very difficult to block tracking scripts by advertising blocker. For an example you may have a look at the easy to use tracking plug-ins offered by Webtrekk for blogs, content management systems and shops.

Some tracking services doesn't use markers like cookies or EverCookies but only browser fingerprinting for surfer recognition. The demonstration project Panopticlick featured out, that more than 80% of browser have a unique fingerprint. The recognition rate increases to 94% if Flash or Java plug-ins were enabled. (How Unique Is Your Web Browser PDF). Tracking services are using more sophisticated methods and achieve 30% higher recognition rates than cookies based approaches. Other tracking services are using browser information, screen size and other values additionally for user recognition.

An increasing number of websites is using more than one tracking service. An example is the webshop Zalando. It uses the following tracking and advertiesment services: 36YIELD, ADSCALE, APPNEXUS, ATDMT, ATEMDA, CRITED, DEMDEX, DOUBLECLICK, FACEBOOK, METRIGO, OPENX, PUBMATIC, ADSERVER, SOCIOMANTIC, YIELDLAB und YIELDMANAGER.

Decreasing number of independent tracking companies

A number of families of domains and tracking services have been created through acquisition of many companies by some global player. The families are sharing collected data and achieve a large coverage of popular websites.

The larges family is Google and associated companies. The earnings of these family are 44% of the world-wide online advertising market. During the last years Google bought the following companies:

Because of this acquisitions tracking features of the Google family are present on more and more popular websites:

Other tracking families are the Overture network, Microsoft and the Yahoo! family, each with a portion of 3-8% of the world-wide online advertising market. The new cooperation of Facebook with BlueKai and Epsilon is the start of a new large tracking family.

Using of Real World Data

The tracking of our online behavior offers only an incomplete view on our interests. First steps are taken by Facebook to include real world data in profiling for proper online advertisements. A cooperation with Axciom and Datalogix was announced in February. Both databrokers operate big databases with real wold data like creditcard payments, loyalty cards at supermarkets and product warranty cards and so on.

If the information flow increased in both direction, our online activities may get more influence of our real live. A year ago Sarah Downey warns:

The harms of online tracking are real and growing. This isn't about targeted advertising, like the ad industry wants everyone to believe. This is about the collection and use of your personal information in ways you can't even imagine.

Today our online activities may decide about getting a new job or may have an influence on assurance taxes. Personally I know 3 cases of including private online activities to check job applicants by personnel managers. In one case the result was positive. In two cases the applicants were rejected mainly (but not only) because of this data.

Auf einem Polizeikongress finden die Teilnehmer ein dankbares Forum, um neue Überwachungsbefugnisse zu fordern. Zentrales Thema auf dem 16. Europäischen Polizei­kongress war die Wiedereinführung der Vorrats­daten­speicherung (neudeutsch: Mindest­speicher­dauer). Heraus­ragende Gedanken äußerte BKA Vize­präsident J. Maurer: Jeder Bürger müsse eine neue Sicht auf das Internet verinnerlichen und eine Speicherung von IP-Adressen sei nicht problematisch, weil:

Wer im Internet ist, hat die Privatheit verlassen.

Diese pauschale Sichtweise würde eine Aufhebung des Post- und Fern­melde­geheimnis für E-Mails und sonstige private Kommunikation im Internet bedeuten. Das Post- und Fern­melde­geheimnis wurde nach den Erfahrungen mit der faschistischen Dikatur Mitte des letzten Jahr­hunderts als Grund­recht in allen über­geordneten Normen­katalogen verankert (UN-Menschen­rechts­konvention, EU-Grund­rechte­charta, Grund­gesetz), als Schutz­recht für Bürger gegen einen über­mächtigen (Polizei-) Staat. Für mich stellt sich die Frage, ob Herr Maurer die geeignete Einstellung hat, um verantwortungsvoll die Führung einer Polizei­behörde mit weit­reichenden geheim­dienstlichen Kompetenzen zu übernehmen.

Ein weiteres Beispiel für den Geist des Kongresses war der starke Beifall für den nordrhein-west­fälische Innenminister R. Jäger, als er die Haltung von Bundes­justiz­ministerin Leutheusser-Schnarren­berger als "nah an einer Straf­vereitelung" bezeichnete. Die Bundes­justiz­ministerin hält eine Mindest­speicher­dauer von sieben Tagen für IP-Adressen und Quick Freeze für Verbindungs­daten für ausreichend (siehe Eckpunkte­papier des BJM zur VDS, PDF). Außerdem ist für Frau Leutheusser-Schnarren­berger Anonymität ein Grund­prinzip des freien Internets.

Medial begleitet wurde der Polizeikongress mit Horror­geschichten über drohende Terror­anschläge per E-Mail oder die schlimmen Folgen fehlender Vorrats­daten­speicherung für die Aufklärung von Mord­fällen (FAZ). Der Bundes­daten­schutz­beauftragte bezeichnete den FAZ-Artikel als unredlich.

Kein Sprecher auf dem Polizeikongress konnte neue Fakten oder Studien präsentieren, welche die Notwendigkeit der Vorrats­daten­speicherung wissenschaftlich belegen. Zur Erinnerung:

• Das wissenschaftlichen Gutachten des Max-Planck-Instituts (MPI) für ausländisches und internationales Straf­recht kam zu dem Schluss, dass die Aufzählung spektakulärer Einzel­fälle nicht als Nach­weis der Notwendigkeit für eine 6-monatige Mindest­speicher­dauer genügt. Die Straf­verfolgungs­behörden haben nach Ansicht der Autoren bisher keine belastbaren Begründungen für eine Schutz­lücke im Internet liefern können.
• Die Zahlen der jährlichen Kriminalstatistiken des BKA zeigen, dass die Vorrats­daten­speicherung 2009 keinen Einfluss auf die Aufklärungs­rate und die allgemeine Entwicklung der Straf­taten im Internet hatte. Es gibt von Jahr zu Jahr mehr Straf­taten im Internet bei abnehmender Aufklärungsrate.

  	2007 (ohne VDS)	2008 (ohne VDS)	2009 (mit VDS)	2010 (ohne VDS)
  Straftaten im Internet	179.026	167.451	206.909	223.642
  Aufklärungsrate im Internet	82.9%	79.8%	75.7%	72,3%

Sicherheitspolitiker aller Ebenen sollten mehr Respekt vor Grund­prinzipien unserer Gesellschaft zeigen, statt nicht-diskussions­fähige Maximal­forderungen zu präsentieren.

Hushmail.com enjoys a good reputation for privacy friendly e-mail services or years. The EFF.org recommended in the tutotial about anonymous e-mails accounts only Hushmail.org (Don't be a Petraeus) and the German Journalist P.Beuth wants to publish a tutorial for anonymous e-mail accounts by using Hushmail.com next days in the online newspaper ZEIT.de.

JonDos does NOT recommend Hushmail.com

Have a look at the privacy policy of Hushmail.com. The content of all emails is scanned and like an extended data retention the following data records are stored for 18 month:

• all sender and recipient email addresses (data retention log)
• all file names of attachments
• subjects of all emails
• URLs in the bodies of unencrypted email
• ... "and any other information that we deem necessary"

The stored records are not deleted when you cancel your account.

When you make a purchase to buy a premium account your IP address, country, city and postal code will be transfered to third party PCI compliant services. Hushmail.com is not responsible for the privacy policy of these services. The usage of PCI compliant services may be useful for payment processors like PayPal.com but it is not required for telecommunication services. JonDos GmbH operates for years successful without using PCI compliant services.

The website of Hushmail.com uses third-party services for some parts such as the help system. After login your Hushmail ID and your name is transferred to these service on purpose (not unintentionally!). For the privacy policy of third-party services Hushmail.com is not responsible.

Recommended e-mail provider

A small list of recommended e-mail provider you may find in our online help about anonymous e-mail accounts with Mozilla Thunderbird. You may send us your recommendations by using our contact form and we will add it after checking the service.

In April 2012 the security scientist Pete Swire published a paper about trends in lawful surveillance. Intelligence services and law enforcement agencies are seeking access to stored data in the cloud and on private computers because wired interception of telecommunication is less effective.

With a new drafted law (BR-Drs. 664/12) the German government is taking a leading position in this development. For the future intelligence services and law enforcement agencies may have warrant-less access to passwords of e-mail accounts and cloud-stored data, PIN codes of smartphones and to the TR-069 interface of routers provided by Internet access provider for customers. Provider with more than 100,000 customers have to offer automated interfaces for lawful access. Smaller provider have to answer a request within 6 hours. All providers are not responsible in case of unauthorized access to user-related telecommunication data.

The German Pirate Party commented:

"This draft is not supported by constitution." (Patrick Breyer, MDL)

JonDonym storage grid

We are going for development of new services to keep your data private. For premium users we offer a storage grid, which does not have all the comfortable features of DropBox and is only accessible by webinterface (at the moment). But it implements some great security concepts:

• The storage nodes of the grid are operated by verified JonDonym operators. Because of splitting and encryption of data the operators can't inspect your uploads.
• An account is not required and no personal data is collected.
• The cryptographic keys for read/write or read-only access are included in the URI and are not linkable to a single person.
• Access to the storage grid is protected by one of the strongest anonymisation services around the world.

The project SSL Pulse tracks nearly 200,000 high profile web sites from the Alexa top one million site list and evaluates their SSL implementation. Only 10% of all sites are genuinely secure.

We want to give some small recommedations for webmaster to improve the security of HTTPS encryption. All sample configuration snippets are working for Apache2, but you may adapt it for other web servers too.

Create a SSL certificate

At first you have to create the SSL certificate and get a signature by a certification authority (CA). You may use checkdomain to get a signed certificate.

All CAs offer a comfortable webinterface to use your browser of all steps of the certificate creation process. We do NOT recommend the use of website wizards. You do not have full control over the creation of your private key. You may use the OpenSSL library to create at first the private key and a certificate signing request (CSR) afterwards on your computer:

Now you can send only the CSR to the CA and you will get the signed certificate (CRT) back.

Enable SSL encryption in your server configuration

To enable SSL encryption you have to load the module "ssl" and add the following lines to your virtual host configuration for port 443. The certificate chain file is only required time by time, please read the documentation of you preferred CA and download the bundle if required.

Restart your web server and SSL encryption is working. But SSL is a complex standard and contains may insecure features.

• Disable insecure SSL protocols

  SSL v.2.0 is "broken by design" and SSL v.3.0 is not secure any more. You have to disable both and use only TLS 1.0 - TLS 1.2. You may use the following configuration option in the file ssl.conf:

  SSLProtocol TLSv1

• Disable insecure cipher

  Disable insecure cipher suites and weak keys in ssl.conf. A year ago the security researchers Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong presented BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS). Actual browsers are not affected by this attack any more. You can ignore warnings about BEAST vulnerability of your webserver. Secure settings are:

  SSLCipherSuite HIGH:!RC4:!MD5:!aNULL:!EDH:!3DES:!ADH

• Disbale TLS compression

  This year Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong presented a new attack CRIME (Compression and Information Leakage of Plaintext). You can avoid this attack by disable TLS cempresion and do not use SPDY. For Apache2 a patch was released in November this year to fix the problem. Keep your software up-2-date.

• Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security

  HTTP Strict Transport Security is a security policy mechanism whereby a web server declares that webbrowser interact with it using only secure HTTPS connections. A HTTP header field is added by the web server to the response. This will avoid an attack which was first introduced by Moxie Marlinspike at 2009 BlackHat. To add the Strict Transport Security header you have to load the module "headers" and add the following line to your virtual host configuration:

  Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000"

Security is a process and not an one-time action. Check your server time by time with the SSL server test for new vulnerabilities and fix it as soon as possible.

The EFF.org evaluated the investigation of FBI in the personal lives of CIA Director David Petraeus, Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelly and General John Allen and published A Tutorial on Anonymous Email Accounts.

1. You should use an anonymisation service when setting up and accessing your webmail account. You must always use the anonymisation service. (The EFF.org recommends Tor, but JonDonym is suited too.)
2. Use a privacy-friendly mail provider with secure SSL encryption. GMail or Yahoo! are not acceptable, but Hushmail is not the only one proper mail provider all over the world. You may find some more recommendations in our online help.
3. If an email address was required for account creation you may use disposable addresses. Do not use an email address, which is traceable to you real identity - never.
4. Use encryption to keep you mails private. The content of emails may be used for deanonymisation. OpenPGP is recommended.
5. Additional we want to add a fifth point. Do not store read or sent mails or drafts on the server of your mail provider. Stored mails are not protected by privacy law like telecommunication, if the owner was able to delete them.

On July 06, 2012 US-President Barack Obama signed the executive order Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions. It empower certain governmental agencies with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies and authorized the DHS to seize private facilities when necessary and effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications. It may be possible to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet to keep Federal Government communication running.

You can see the feeling of a regional internet "blackout" in North America this week. On October 26 some US-router went down. The consequences were significant trouble in internet traffic. Internet Traffic Report reports that Asian and North American packet loss has jumped to an average 30-35%, compared with 9% for Europe and 0% each for South America and Australia. The volume of traffic went down by 5-10% for North America at all (USA, Canada, Mexico). Many people are barely able to connect to the network.

Fife days later on November 01 the New York main router was back in service. The volume of traffic increases (but did not reaches normal values) and the value of "packet loss" went down on November 01, 2012.

On November 02 the first router in New Jersey was back in service. The volume of traffic and the value of "packet loss" reaches normal values.

May be in this case the US government is not responsible for the local blackout. The Content Delivery Network Akamai reports that internet-based attacks are up 50% over average on October 26, 2012. The US east coast was a highest volume region.

No independent analysis of this "blackout" was published at the moment in our knowledge. But it seems the losses arising from Sandy were mainly responsible for the local blackout.

Telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment are required by law to conduct electronic surveillance for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In United States the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) wiretapping law passed in 1994. In Germany a similar law was adopted 1995 by German FEDs' initiative (it was replaced in 2002 with the Telekommunikations-Überwachungs­­verordnung (TKÜV)) and other countries adopted similar laws too.

Since 2005 CALEA applies to Internet access providers and providers of Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services with interconnections to the public switched telephone network like Skype.

Encrypted Voice-over-IP without backdoor

To answer the Total Information Awareness Project of the US administration's and other surveillance projects some nerds develop secure Voice-over-IP networks.

• Open Secure Telephony Network (OSTN)

  The Guardian Project is working to define a defacto standard by which a voice over internet protocol service can be considered end-to-end secured, with verifiable encryption, minimal logging, and a decentralized model of deployment and use.

  At the moment the project is ready for usage but still under development. Three OSTN providers are stable working and some VoIP clients for desktop computers and smartphones offer full OSTN support. The server software is open source and it is possible to run your own VoIP server.

  The configuration of your "secured" VoIP client is very simple. You have to create an account on the website of an OSTN provider and enter the login credentials you got like a SIP account. Secure SRTP/ZRTP encryption of incoming and outgoing phone calls is activated without any action required by you or your communication partner. You have to verify only a 4-digit combination of letters and numbers displayed by your VoIP client with your partner. If both of you will see the same combination of letters and numbers no man-in-middle is sniffing you call.

  To avoid local surveillance with a (federal) trojan horse like Digitask trojan or FinSpy or HackingTeam RCS you may use a live-cd. The JonDo Live-CD / DVD contains the VoIP client Jitsi with full support of the OSTN protocol.

• Silent Circle

  Silent Circle is a commercial project of Phil Zimmermann (developer of OpenPGP for email encryption and the ZRTP protocoll for VoIP encryption), Combat-decorated Navy SEALs and privacy activists. For $20 per month it offers secure Voice-over-IP with strong encryption and without surveillance backdoor. Client software for iPhone and Windows is ready for use, an Android client is coming soon. Solutions for easy to use encrypted e-mail and SMS are under development too.

  The logo of "Silent Circle", the red Enso symbol, was used by the 47 Ronin (a group of Japanese "Masterless Samurai") as a symbol of their protection of the citizens 300 years ago. It is a legendary symbol of honor, character, skill and unconventional tactics.

It is NOT possible to use JonDonym or Tor for anonymisation of Voice-over-IP calls.

NIST has announced the winner of the SHA-3 Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Competition. Keccak has been selected as SHA-3.

We will use the new recommended hash algorithm for the further development of our software and replace old hash algorithm.

Iran gouvernment censors many internet services like Youtube, Twitter, Facebook... for several years. Websites of anonymisation services like JonDonym and Tor are blocked too. But the censorship is not effective like the "Great Firewall", many people are using anti-censorship services, thousands of Irani people are using Facebook accounts...

Email services like GMail, Yahoo and others are not blocked in generally. But time by time the HTTPS encryption is attacked or blocked. In Februar 2012 Iran gouvernment blocks all HTTPS connections to avoid protests at the national holiday.

In the last days from 09/24 to 09/30 all HTTPS connections to Google services were blocked. Iran gouvernment asked Google to remove an anti-islamic video from Youtube. Such removel requests by governments are common. Google rejected and the Iran telecommunications ministry committee used it for a reason to block all Google services. After a few days Gmail access was restored.

"We wanted to block YouTube, and Gmail was also blocked, which was involuntary." (Iran's telecommunications ministry committee)

GMail is very popular in Iran (more than Yahoo and others) because of security reasons. A year ago it was possible to detect a high quality man-in-the-middle attack to Google services and other websites by Google users. Other webservices doesn't detect the attack.

The Iran censorship and surveillance infrastructure is discussed at all popular media. But very less attention is spent to the opposite, the blocking of Irani users by internet service like Google App Engine or the prohibition of Skype usage because of western sanctions. The US gouvernment spends $100 million for the project The Internet and Human Rights to develop an anti-censorship software exclusively for Irani people but it is blocking the usage of modern communication technologies in Iran by sanctions. What makes the difference?

Together with Iran censorship measures the plans of a "halal" internet (a separate internet only for Iran) are dicussed all times. At the moment in a first step gouvernment agencies and business companies cut of the connenction to the global internet. As far as we know it may take up to 1-2 years to prepare the "halal" internet for normal users. But the "halal" internet may not replace the internet at all. It may offer a secure and easy to use alternative. This may lead to a dilemma for Irani people. The gouvernment pretensions to seize communication surveillance are well known and easy to implement in a national internet. But the risks because of the internet based cyberwar against Iran are real too and used by the gouvernment to promote the "halal" internet. After Stuxnet, Flame and Duqu a new clone Gauss was discovered in August and now 3 new Stuxnet variants were discovered by Kasperky, CERT-Bund/BSI and Symantec, one of them "in the wild" in Iran and Sudan.

Update: The paper The Hidden Internet of Iran by C. Anderson documents the usage of the private IP addresse area 10.0.0.0/8 for domestic proposes to build an national "darknet" of Iran. Some services are running now like Iran.ir (National Webmail Service) with IP address 10.8.12.18.

The EU sponsored Clean IT project is supposed to develop ideas and recommendations which help banning "terroristic" content out of the Internet. EDRi has leaked an internal discussion paper which shows where the recommendations are heading to. For instance, the following actions are proposed together with an operating schedule:

• building legal foundations to make real names mandatory in order to prevent using online services anonymously
• option to remove undesirable content on the Internet without looking at it if law enforcement agencies deem it appropriat
• restriction of the liability privilege of ISPs and economic discriminationof non-cooperating ISPs
• monitoring of social networks by undercover agents of law enforcement agencies
• constititional barriers to filtering the Internet traffic shall get removed
• traffic filtering by access providers and ISPs shall happen on a "voluntary" base

According to the view of the members of the Clean It project anonymity on the Internet does first and foremost help terrorists. Using online services anonymously is not necessary for ordinary citizens:

Terrorists (and other criminals) profit from the anonymity that large parts of the Internet offer. Even though anonymity to other users is logical and desirable for some Internet services, for many it is not a necessity. (see: project website)

The 69th German Legal Associations's Meeting (Deutscher Jusristentag) in Munich (Germany) came to similar conclusions and is recommending appropriate measures to the German lawmakers disposing anonymity on the Internet.

We must not acknowledge a "right to use the Internet anonymously". While using the Internet actively producing own content a user must not stay anonymous but must at least be identifiable if pseudonyms ar deployed. (page 24)

Furthermore the Legal Association's Meeting recommends introducing the retention of telecommunication data (aka Vorratsdatenspeicherung) at least for 6 months and the federal trojan horse (Bundestrojaner) means of law enforcement.

Does anonymity protect "terrorists" only?

Data miner on the Internet compile comprehensive user profiles. In order to do so surfing habits, email communication, publications in social networks and the Web 2.0 are analyzed. These data collections can have a tremendous impact on the life of ordinary citizens.

Sarah Downey (Senior Privacy Strategist) is warning about the growing harm due to data collections. These data can decide whether you get a loan, a contract for your mobile phone or a job. Public health insurance companies are cutting benefits due to publications in social networks and identiy theft based on information found on the Internet is a rapidly growing delict.

The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, Peter Schaar, commented the discussion regarding a need for real names on the Internet already half a year ago:

Given the very detailed data available on the Internet and the more and more effective mining capacities the option to use the Internet anonymously or pseudonymously today is more important than ever.

The significance of anonymity for basic human rights like freedom of expression or freedom of the press (protection of sources) has been emphasized many times and Federal Minister of Justice, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said in her key note on the 7th International For..Net Symposium in Passau (Germany):

Banning anonymity and pseudonymity on the Internet would thus mean to silence exactly those minority opinions which constitute a liberal, plural societyin the first place---and were therefore in Germany under constitutional law highly problematic.

During the last month we implemented some new payment methods to buy JonDonym premium traffic in our webshop. Now it is possible to pay per Liberty Reserve, cashU, Pecunix and Bitcoin. Most payment methods are only available in our webshop and will be not supported by the JonDo build-in payment. Some other payment methods were rejected after evaluation (OKPAY, Dwolla and Stripe) because of a very small user base or the requirement of an US bank account.

Some user reported problems using Paysafecard for anonymous payments. We tried to become an accepted UKash merchant too. It was rejected by UKash without comments. A few weeks ago UKash published a new Merchant Acceptance Policy and the reasons are now clear:

Ukash will not under any circumstances knowingly approve Merchants associated directly or indirectly with the following products or services:
......
l. IP anonymisers or private VPNs or any similar service which has the intention of hiding the true identity of a computer or device.

Anonymous payment for small amounts becomes more and more difficult. At first prepaid cards are affected at the moment:

• In Germany you may only use up to 100 € anonymous with prepaid cards.
• Using UKash or Paysafecard vouchers to charge your Liberty Reserve or cashU account anonymous is not possible any more. You have to submit a copy of your identity card for identification.
• Some exchangers like ECardOne does not accept German prepaid cards any more.
• The selling of paysafecards was closed in some countries like Spain (reported by user).

We collected some hints for anonymous payment in our online help with advices for a smooth and anonymous deployment of paysafecard cash codes and anonymous using of Bitcoin.

In the long term running Bitcoin may offer a possibility for anonymous payment. But Bitcoin is not anonymous by default. Researchers published an analysis of Bitcoin anonymity at the 28C3. It was possible to connect Bitcoin accounts and discover the IP addresses of payments. Because the function of Bitcoin is based upon internet traffic you may stay anonymous by using services like JonDonym (see our online help). Understanding of the usage of Bitcoin may be a more and more useful investment for the future (in our opinion).

Because of some confused discussions in our forum about e-mail usage we want to outline the recommendations of JonDos GmbH.

Webinterfaces of mail providers

Using a webinterfaces for e-mail communication is not the recommended way.

• HTTPS encryption of most websites is not secure. Only 10% of the top 200.000 websites with HTTPS encryption offer a secure configuration. Most problems are weak encryption, insecure renegotiation and BEAST vulnerability. We checked the webinterfaces of some mail providers at random and none of them was genuinely secure.

• Third party web tracking by advertising and tracking elements can leak identifying information like user IDs or usernames by URL or page title to tracking services after login. Time by time the leak of identifying information may be unintentionally by the mail provider. But intentionally or unintentionally - the results are equal. Tracking services can link all e-mail accounts and social media accounts together. This problem is not limited to webinterfaces of mail providers. A study of the University Stanford featured out: 61% of TOP websites leak identifying information after login to third party tracking services.

  There are substantial evidence that user IDs and usernames can trivially be used to identify a user. Some tracking companies have already deployed username based matching in their products. Additionally we want to point out the usage of the near-ubiquitous online tracking programs by law enforcement (and intelligence services?).

• There is a major technological trend in surveillance from real-time intercepts to access of stored records (cloud services, mail providers...) because of declining effectiveness of traditional wiretapping. By using a webinterface all mails you did not delete (sent and received mails, drafts) are stored on the mail server outside of your control.

• End-2-end encryption for e-mails is difficult to use (with OpenPGP) or not possible (with S/MIME). Some mail providers offer S/MIME encryption in the webinterface. This kind of encryption is a placebo, do not use it. The private key is stored on the server and easy to compromise. A secure end-2-end encryption is not possible with this solution.

Use an email client

We only recommend Mozilla Thunderbird. There are some other nice e-mail clients available too. But because of limited resources we can not gather recommendations for other e-mail clients. A tutorial for a secure Thunderbird configuration you may find in our online help: Anonymous e-mail accounts with Thunderbird .

1. Think about your mail provider. Does he sell you a service or does he earn money by collecting your data.

2. Do not use IMAP accounts. In this case all mails are stored on the server. We recommend the usage of POP3 accounts. For POP3 accounts the mails are stored on your computer.

3. Secure your SSL/TLS setting. For compatibility with some mail providers Thunderbird supports old and insecure SSL/TLS encryption settings. You have to disable it. In case of problems by connecting you mail server (SMTP or POP3) with secure settings, you may leave the provider and choose another one with secure SSL/TLS encryption.

4. Read and write your mails in "plain text" only. Otherwise dangerous e-mail attachments could compromise your computer.

5. HTML-only mails may contain many tracking features. Read it only in "Simple HTML" or disable all HTML privacy issues.

If you were using anonymisation services like JonDonym or Tor you have to set some more configuration values to hide your prefered language, your regional provenance, your local IP address and the software you are using. Do NOT use the account creation wizard! It will leak your real IP address because of a serios bug in Thunderbird. To create a new account you have to start Thunderbird with "Work offline".

Please read our tutorial carefully .

We know, it is not easy for beginners to setup a secure Thunderbird configuration. Together with TorProject.org we are going for a simple to install Thunderbird-XPI called TorBirdy. At the moment only a very early pre-alpha release is available (for testing purposes only!). We want to invite developers to support TorBirdy to make it ready as soon as possible.