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Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
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EFF, TOR, VPN AND TAILS

Due to the recent release of Tails 3.6 and a bit of old news making rounds again about US government involvement in the Tor project, I thought I’d explain a bit about these 4 separate topics. Each one is involved with user privacy and these are really good tools for surfing in areas where internet traffic is heavily monitored, they can also help you get around school internet walls that are blocking you from going to certain sites, be it a DNS filter or a hosts file. I’ll briefly explain what each do.

  1. EFF aka Electronic Frontier Foundation, is the foundation that is spearheading privacy and tracking protection projects of various calibre. They are activists for internet privacy who attempt to influence government decisions based on online anonymity in favor of end users and they have created and or funded multiple projects from browser extensions to descriptive articles to even the Tor project itself. Some notable extensions are Privacy Badger and HTTPSEverywhere. The former attempts to collect information on trackers as the user browses the web via heuristics. The latter extension blocks content based on the presence or lack thereof, of a security protocol header.
  2. Tor is known as The Onion Relay network, this means that it relays traffic through various nodes. Some users can use their computers to serve as a node for other users if they wish. Tor is basically a VPN that doesn’t require you to pay and doesn’t keep records of your usage.Tor has nodes from the US to the Netherlands and in between. The Tor team also provide a separate browser to utilize this network called the Tor Browser Bundle. This browser package is often used for posting articles anonymously to blocked or political sites. It can also protect the privacy of users who want to publish a website without leaving a trail to their location. Not a perfect solution if you’re planning on taking part in a crime, but for some basic privacy, it’s one of the best.
  3. VPN or Virtual Private Networks are networks that may log users, often ask for money in return for services rendered, limit the amount of bandwidth and time you can use their service and as I have found, are harder to get working on my network because it is hard to get around my ISP. VPNs, despite their potential shadiness, are really good at protecting user privacy, but not every VPN is the same. Most VPN’s will have fine print attached, or some kind of EULA that I would encourage potential users to read carefully. VPN’s work similarly to Tor, but they often log users’ time online and can limit your bandwidth based on a set time period. VPN’s will allow users to connect every program through the network, while Tor, unless specifically set up on your network, will most likely only work reliably on the browser, much in the same way as a proxy.
  4. Tails(The Amnesiac Incognito Live System), is an open-sourced Linux-based operating system that uses the Gnome desktop. Tails uses the Tor network and also prevents programs installed from leaving information behind on the flash drive or hard disk. In previous versions, Tails allowed the user to mimic the Windows 8 desktop, while that feature has since been removed, there are still multiple layouts preconfigured. Tails comes with the Tor Browser Bundle installed by default, also the ESR version of Firefox which will display a message that you are using a non anonymizing browser session. Tails, by design, is meant for live desktop sessions, however, it can be installed to hard drives. While this is a great way to surf and work anonymously, the use of the Gnome desktop makes Tails quite bloated and therefore, probably not suitable for older machines. The latest version is 3.6 and it adds command line tools for removing meta data from PDF documents. An error message that shows the type of graphics card is now displayed when Gnome fails to load. Many applications were updated, such as Thunderbird, Tor, Electrum and the Linux kernel. Tails is based on Debian.

To download Tor, Tails or to check out the EFF, I will link their respective sites below. For great VPN ideas, I can not link those as I do not use one myself and can make no claim as to which is the best, however, I will possible do a small list reviewing a few prominent ones in a future article. I also plan to do a proper review of Tor and Tails in a later article as well.

https://www.torproject.org

https://tails.boum.org/news/version_3.6/index.en.html

https://www.eff.org

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