New incognito search engine

[67GTA]

I ran across this while using stumbleupon. http://usestealth.com/#

[SteveRiley]

Interesting. If I may so indulge, herewith follows a brief dissection of certain of their claims.

We don't track you, save your searches, record your IP address, store any cookies, or collect or share any information with the sites you visit.
I have no reason to doubt this, so I'll take your word. But every web server logs source IP addresses -- are you purging these from your logs as well?

We're not advertising yet, but when we start we're willing to sacrifice 50% of our revenue for your privacy.
I'm not exactly sure what "sacrifice 50% of our revenue" means or why the particular number 50% has any relevance. But why would any advertiser choose to spend money with you since it's likely they will realize zero return? Is it not obvious that the intersection of the set of people who would use your site and the set of people who click on ads is the null set?

when you visit a site, your computer automatically sends information about it to that site (including your user agent and IP address). This information can often be used to identify you directly.
That is an incorrect assertion.

When you search on Stealth you are also using Alpha SSL, a secure encryption, which helps prevent sending your search terms to sites you visit.
I'm sorry, but what? I have 17 years experience in information security and I have never heard of "Alpha SSL." Oh, perhaps you mean that you have a certificate from AlphaSSL, a certification authority? I really have no way of verifying this, because nowhere in my browser can I find evidence that you're using the HTTPS protocol.

[NickStone]

You can also use www.duckduckgo.com for private searching

[kubicle]

Another privacy enhanced search is ixquick's startpage: https://startpage.com/

Choose your poison, but since it's mostly a matter of trust, you should probably pick one of the more established players.

Of course, practically any search engine is likely to be more private than google.

[Ole Juul]

It looks like they're just trying to cash in on the latest buzz words and hoping that those that don't go beyond the words will be impressed.

Like others have mentioned, ixquick and duckduckgo work just fine and without the over-the-top sales pitch. For that matter, if you don't want to pass on your search terms to (most) sites, then Google SSH will also do that. https://www.google.com/ (simple as that).

I alternate between all those just to (in a very small way) not promote the dominance of one. Ya, that's just on principle since it seems Google has it anyway. I even use Yahoo! once in a while. I have a feeling that spreading your searches around may actually be more useful in the long run.

BTW, does anybody know how Google identifies searchers? I hope it's not by IP because that would mean that my town, and the one next to us, would be included as one because we all have the same outward facing IP!

[SteveRiley]

BTW, does anybody know how Google identifies searchers? I hope it's not by IP because that would mean that my town, and the one next to us, would be included as one because we all have the same outward facing IP!

They drop three cookies on your machine: NID, PREF, and SNID.

[Ole Juul]

They drop three cookies on your machine: NID, PREF, and SNID.

Of course, I wasn't thinking. Thanks. Now that I look there are actually a total of 10 Google cookies. I don't know if the others are of much importance, but I'll try deleting the three you mention and see what happens. My searches are often focused in a way that gets in the way of what I'm looking for, so this may be useful when using the Goog.

[SteveRiley]

Now that I look there are actually a total of 10 Google cookies. I don't know if the others are of much importance, but I'll try deleting the three you mention and see what happens.

I deleted all my Google cookies. Then I visited the website, entered a search, then went to search settings to disable safe search and instant. After that, I checked the cookies and saw the three I mentioned.

[Ole Juul]

I deleted all my Google cookies. Then I visited the website, entered a search, then went to search settings to disable safe search and instant. After that, I checked the cookies and saw the three I mentioned.

I just now deleted them all and again visited the web site. I did not yet disable instant. That netted me 4 cookies. Two from each of google.ca and google.com. What I'm now having a hard time getting my head around is the result.

Call me crazy, I would, but my machine is faster. It's a bit objective, but something happened with the speed of my browsers. I usually have 4 or 5 different ones open, but in this case the usual Firefox and Chrome are both open with multiple windows on different desktops. What tends to happen is FF gets really laggy after a while, and with Chrome open too, it can get ridiculously bad after a short while. Now, without restarting anything, I have a an apparent speedup. Like I say, judging random page loads can be a bit objective though.

What is not objective, is the speed of the built in text editor. Just before I deleted the cookies (and for a day or two before that) it was so that I would wait up to 2 seconds for the cursor to move. (I tend to type from my head so I just type anyway and it eventually shows up.) Like I said, I have not restarted anything and all the same old windows are open. That delay almost disappeared with the cookies, and so did the page scroll delay. How can this be? Am I really going crazy? (don't answer that)

[SecretCode]

Obviously you ... don't want us to answer that

The only reason I can think of for the text editor speeding up is that something you've done in the browsers causes them to use much less CPU power in KWin, and in turn KWin has more oomph available for other apps including the text editor. Since KWin is probably involved in every graphic app, removing a bottleneck could have benefits elsewhere. (The bottleneck might not be just CPU but threads, semaphores, critical sections, and other things I don't even know the meaning of!)

Certainly issues with cursors moving sluggishly and keystrokes being recognised sluggishly make me think graphics, and you haven't changed your graphics hardware driver which leaves kwin.

[GreyGeek]

$ whois usestealth.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

Domain Name: USESTEALTH.COM
Registrar: DYNADOT, LLC
Whois Server: whois.dynadot.com
Referral URL: http://www.dynadot.com
Name Server: NS100.DYNADOT.COM
Name Server: NS101.DYNADOT.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 17-sep-2011
Creation Date: 17-sep-2011
Expiration Date: 17-sep-2012

>>> Last update of whois database: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:34:39 UTC <<<
........

Registrant:
Jon Cook
319 Cooper River Drive
Mt Pleasant, SC 29464
United States

Administrative Contact:
Jon Cook
319 Cooper River Drive
Mt Pleasant, SC 29464
United States
joncook1987@gmail.com
+843 298-0263

Technical Contact:
Jon Cook
319 Cooper River Drive
Mt Pleasant, SC 29464
United States
joncook1987@gmail.com
+843 298-0263

Record expires on 2012/09/17 UTC
Record created on 2011/09/17 UTC

........

That site was created on Sept 17, 2011, six months ago, and unless renewed will expire in six months. Someone has written an article that mentions it:
http://www.energyrebels.com/blog/201...l-information/
Did Jon plant it?

When you do a search on the address given you find out that it is a luxury suite on the 3rd floor of the "Tides Luxury Condos":
http://www.myluxurycharlestonhome.co...ry-condos.html
and that it has been up for sale for 288 days. The website was registered about 180 days ago. Is Jon still living there?

Following that up you'll find that it was a luxury condo built in 2008 for nearly $1M and is now being offered, after a year on the market, at just over $500K.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/31...92337540_zpid/
Cook, or his father, Ken L, apparently bought it for $896K on August of 2008. He's was paying a mortgage of $2K/mo and taxes of $4K/mo. His phone records link him to another property that is under water, listing at less than P of its original value: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/20...39650599_zpid/

His parents (?) home on Hilton Head Island, 20 Wicklow Drive was sold in Feb of 2010 for $720K, well below its asking price of $1.1M.

The real estate picture leaves an impression of someone being seriously hurt by the current economic woes.

On Quora.com he describes himself as 'Founder of Stealth', a 'software engineer' and 'hacker' (now removed), but he called Skype a social networking service.
http://www.quora.com/Jon-Cook/topics
That site has his picture, which can be used to compare with others postings he's made around the Internet .... like his myspace page:
https://www.myspace.com/391061503
which shows a younger Jon. He last updated it three years ago, and probably forgot about it.

Oblivious to Internet security, and the fact that once info is put on line it is generally available for a looooonnngggg time, he gives us his life history. He's from Hilton Head, SC and graduated from the Hilton Head Christian Academy in 2005. But, that doesn't mean he is a "good boy", as the photos on his myspace page reveal. Did you enjoy the photos showing him slumming the resorts? He also appears to like gambling, drinking, beautiful women, and flipping the bird. He seemed to enjoy the privileges of parental wealth while a student. He attended Pepperdine University for two years but didn't graduate, leaving in 2007. His main task there apparently was that of playing on their baseball team. He interned at two resorts and then started his own "Cook Music Entertainment" company, of which he is the CEO. A search for his music company gives NO hits on Google. It appears to have no web presence or a viable website. He also started another company, Veribu, which is in direct competition with Bosix and Google Talk: http://veribu.com/. Uh oh ... taking a pea shooter to a bazooka fight:

His IP address resolves into 10 other hosts: http://www.ip-adress.com/reverse_ip/216.22.21.159 IF it were doing any kind of decent traffic it probably wouldn't be sharing that IP with other hosts.

My take is that based on his conspicuous consumption, high life style and recent economic troubles, he is in financial trouble and needs to raise cash fast. IMO, usestealth.com is Jon's honey pot for demographic info which he will market for as much cash as he can. I believe that given his background and propensity for the high life, he is probably doing everything he can to accumulate all the info of your use of his search engine would give, in order to monetize it. He is currently working in Las Vegas. Also, the host is in the USA and the Fed gov is getting draconian about Internet hosts giving them access or tracking ability to user data.

I am not going to use it.

DuckDuckGo also claims to be an anonymous search engine that doesn't track. Their whois shows:

Registration Service Provided By: Namecheap.com
Contact: support@namecheap.com
Visit: http://namecheap.com

Domain name: duckduckgo.com

Registrant Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected ()

Fax:
11400 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90064
US

Administrative Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected (69be6da3dee4445790db53ef58f15da3.protect@whoisgua rd.com)
+1.6613102107
Fax: +1.6613102107
11400 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90064
US

Technical Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected (69be6da3dee4445790db53ef58f15da3.protect@whoisgua rd.com)
+1.6613102107
Fax: +1.6613102107
11400 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90064
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
NS0.DNSMADEEASY.COM
NS1.DNSMADEEASY.COM
NS2.DNSMADEEASY.COM
NS3.DNSMADEEASY.COM
NS4.DNSMADEEASY.COM

Creation date: 11 Nov 2007 17:24:00
Expiration date: 23 Jun 2019 03:59:00

Like usestealth.com, one takes anonymity on duckduckgo.com by faith. At least those behind duckduckgo.com know enough about the web to use an anonymous registration service, and they plan on being around another five years. "Software engineer and hacker" Cook didn't seem to be aware of those capabilities.

[SteveRiley]

Jerry... I'm... speechless!

I'm not sure which is more impressive -- this guy's incompetence or your investigative acumen!

[Snowhog]

Jerry... I'm... speechless!

I'm not sure which is more impressive -- this guy's incompetence or your investigative acumen!

Speachless is an understatement! And he keeps telling us that his faculties are in 'decline!' Me thinks NOT!

[GreyGeek]

More on anonymous servers and VPN connections. Here is an article which asked a collection of VPN providers two questions:

1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold?


2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?

Many of you are aware of the claim that law enforcement captured one of the Anonymous hackers by tracking his activities through a VPN connection:

Last month it became apparent that not all VPN providers live up to their marketing after an alleged member of Lulzsec was tracked down after using a supposedly anonymous service from HideMyAss.

I suspect and believe that VPN connections do NOT guarantee your anonymity regardless of what the VPN service claims or says.

As one of them who was asked to answer the two questions said:

“Realistically unless you operate out of one of the ‘Axis of Evil Countries” Law Enforcement will find a way to put the screws to you,” Cryptocloud add.

It was nonsense for the Anonymous hacker to assume that being in Europe would protect him from US Law Enforcement,

In my opinion those VPN services that admitted that they logged data were just being honest. Regardless of what the others say, they are being less that truthful. One of the services gave the reason why:

The company (VyprVPN) policy says that logging data “is maintained for use with billing, troubleshooting, service offering evaluation, Terms of Service issues, Acceptable Use Policy issues, and for handling crimes performed over the service. We maintain this level of information on a per-session basis for at least 90 days.”

VPN services which do not keep log records for at least 90 days or longer are opening themselves up to large financial and legal exposures.

The HMA VPN service responded to complaints by some folks about their actions:

For your info, the use of VPN does not allow one to perform illegal activities (with impunity-GG). And I can guarantee you that all VPN providers keep logs, if they claimed that they do not, they are seriously misleading you. These logs are for us to locate abusive users (spamming, bots, file sharing complaints etc etc) to prevent our VPN servers from going down due to these abuses. It is very naive for one to think that by paying $11/month you will get total anonymity where you can abuse the service however they like and performing illegal activities behind a VPN.


There is nothing to 'fight' against this case as it is clearly a violation of laws in which we are a legitimate company and we DO NOT protect criminals. If we do, what's the difference are we compared to these cyber criminals?


You might want to read our blog on this entire Lulzsec fiasco: http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011...

The PirateBay website "thought" that they were immune from legal attack because of the laws in their country. Once the US State Dept suggested that failure of that country to shut down PirateBay and prosecute the owners would result in severe financial repercussions. What country would let ligitimate businesses suffer so that some clowns could steal copyrighted media with impunity.

There are oppresive countries whose citizens attempt to exercise freedom of opinion and expression by connecting to sites through a VPN service out side of their country. To their disgrace Apple, Microsoft and Google have helped the Communist Chinese government to indentify dissidents using anonymous services outside their country. Using a VPN for political purposes is a valid use. Using it to steal is no different that wearing a mask during a holdup.

[bra|10n]

I'll throw this one up for the usual scrutiny,

http://www.startpage.com

Interested in the thoughts of others here more knowledgeable in matters of secure browsing.