BitBlinder
Why use BitBlinder?
Online privacy and freedom is vanishing. Marketers and criminals alike track your online activities while Internet filtering becomes increasingly common. Governments and Internet Service Providers around the world are trying to restrict the information that you can access.
BitBlinder aims to preserve your privacy and keep your IP address safe from them. It also allows you to avoid most restrictions and filters on you Internet access. BitBlinder supports both BitTorrent and normal web traffic, with more applications coming soon. How does it Work?
BitBlinder mixes your Internet traffic with the traffic of everyone else in the BitBlinder network. That way, no one can can know where you go or what you do online.
Normally, whenever you visit a website, your computer reveals your IP address to the site and anyone else who might be watching. This means that your Internet Service Provider or someone on your wireless network can see everything you do online. Even encryption, which hides the contents of the pages you view, does not prevent this attack on your privacy. These examples apply equally well to BitTorrent where even more third parties (eg peers and trackers) know your identity.
Your ISP and neighbors watching you go to a website.
BitBlinder works by having a peer in our network act as a proxy for you. Instead of requesting a page from the website itself, BitBlinder asks the peer to get the page and send it back to you. Since the connection to the peer is encrypted, eavesdroppers don't know what information you sent--they don't even know that you visited the website! Of course, the website itself doesn't know you exist since it received the request from your peer, not you.
Sending traffic through a BitBlinder peer.
The previous setup does help guard your privacy, but it can still get better. In the last setup, the peer knows who you are and the website you visited--everything he needs to compromise your identity! BitBlinder offers even stronger protection for those who need it by using multiple peers in a row. Instead of simply asking your peer to go to the website for you, BitBlinder now asks your peer to send your request through two other peers. This way, each peer only knows the previous and next person to talk to, so no one can figure out both your identity and the website that you went to.
Sending traffic through multiple BitBlinder peers.
Another great benefit of proxying Internet traffic is that it also helps avoid filters. Filters generally work by restricting access to certain IP addresses. BitBlinder naturally avoids this type of filter since your requests are going to a random peer, not the blocked site. Of course, filtering in real life is much more complicated and BitBlinder may or may not help in your situation.
Join our Network.
To use BitBlinder, we require that you either act as a relay for other peers in the network, or pay for your traffic. During our beta testing we are not accepting payments, so you have to be a relay to continue using the network. We do this for a few reasons:
- Keep the network fast. Basically, the more relays in the network, the faster it is for everyone. If people could use the network without contributing, it would be unusably slow. Besides, no one likes a leech!
- Gain plausible deniability. You might be able to reasonably claim that Internet traffic coming from your computer did not originate from you even if it did. This is not legal advice, but it is nice that the other traffic obscures your own traffic and helps preserve your privacy.
- Its free. That is to say, BitBlinder as a service is free, and most likely providing bandwidth to our network is free for you as well. The vast majority of Internet users pay a flat monthly fee for Internet access regardless of how much bandwidth they use and how much traffic they send. Even if you have a cap, BitBlinder easily allows you to limit the amount of traffic you proxy in a given month or even limit the bandwith devoted to proxying traffic.
- Promote free speech. Help promote free speech by letting others circumvent filters and protect their identities online. Without privacy and anonymity, people cannot always be free to say what they really think. By using the network, you can help people in other more oppressive countries have unrestricted access to the Internet.
Be Safe Online.
While BitBlinder offers strong protection for your privacy, it is neither magic nor a panacea. You should use secure connections whenever possible to prevent spying on your traffic when it leaves the proxy network. When browsing, use HTTPS instead of HTTP whenever it is supported by the website. After all, even if an eavesdropper doesn't know who you are, you probably still don't want them reading the contents of your traffic.
Of course, there are a few other situations where you can compromise your own identity even if you use encryption and multiple proxies. For instance if you use gmail, Facebook, or Twitter, you can't be anonymous since your identity is tied to your account. Hiding your IP address simply doesn't do any good to that end since the website knows who you are anyway. Most of all, use common sense! Dont give out your personally identifying information to websites that you don't trust. Be Responsible!
Finally, use BitBlinder responsibly! We ask that all of our users follow our Code of Conduct. Strong anonymity and filter avoidance is not a license for malicious behaviour! Respect your fellow netizens.