As a special service to our visitors from heavily firewalled countries, here is a collection of privacy protection software. If you are unable to download from these websites due to blocking, please contact me:
IP numbers:
Just like every phone on the phone network has a unique phone number, every computer on the net has a unique IP number. This IP number is a "fingerprint" that (almost always) sticks to the emails you send out, making internet police able to locate the computer it was sent from.
Most email providers, e.g. hotmail and yahoo, include these "fingerprints".
To my knowledge, gmail ( www.gmail.com ), hushmail ( www.hushmail.com ) and fastmail ( www.fastmail.fm )are the only major email providers that hide the IP numbers, making it very difficult for internet police to track the origin of an email message. Hushmail also offers built-in encryption.
Morale: Use gmail, hushmail or fastmail to stay safe.
Hacktivismo.com
is an international group of hackers, human rights workers, lawyers and artists that evolved out of THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), a publishing and computer security group.
Psiphon.civisec.org
Psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server.
Tor
an anonymous internet communication system.
tor.eff.org
Scatterchat
is a secure instant messaging client.
scatterchat.en.softonic.com
PGP/GPG
encryption software
pgpi.org
gnupg.org
Thunderbird+GPG
Thunderbird is an email client, Enigmail offers GPG encryption.
Thunderbird
enigmail.mozdev.org
Ultrasurf
secure internet surfing.
ultrareach.com
Freegate
encrypted internet access.
download.com
Proxies
proxy4free.com
stayinvisible.com
Civisec.org
Advice about internet privacy and security.
Reporters without borders
Several good articles on internet censorship.
Linux is an alternative OS with lots of built-in security software:
www.mandriva.com
www.ubuntu.com
www.debian.org
http://fedoraproject.org