@kattiva 225032 wrote:

I have tried all of the all in one messengers. Have been able to use them easily. I use them when im at work, only thing is after a few days, they get blocked by a web filter installed by out IT guy. How do i get around this? And also any new web/all in one messengers anyone know of?

You can use a webproxy to connect to the outside internet. There’s a huge list of web proxies here: https://proxy.org/ Of course, these will most probably not work with meebo — but it doesn’t hurt to try.

You can use SOCKS proxies listed here: SOCKS servers lists or see the HTTP proxy list for softwares that only support HTTP proxies: Proxy Lists. Sorted by type. List #1 Of course, these might have been set up by nefarious (even malicious) organizations to log your conversations/ track you online — but so could the proxies above and the links below. Always use encrypted protocols for complete security.

If you wish for your local network administrator to remain ignorant of your practices (this is true unless the administrator has installed malware on the computer you use) use the Tor anonymity network: Tor: anonymity online After some configuration including setting config FascistFirewall to 1, Tor will only connect to nodes that are listening on 443 or 80 — the former being default https — so it looks like you’re just browsing encrypted internet.

All of these solutions (with the exception of webproxies listed on proxy.org) require that you reconfigure your software. To find how to configure software search google. for example: configure AIM to use SOCKS proxy – Google Search

If you cannot install software on the computer that you are using or if you can’t reconfigure your current web browser to proxy your connections I suggest you look at softwares that can be run from usb disks. List of portable instant messaging softwares Pidgin is a free multiprotocol messenger that can be configured to use HTTP proxies or SOCKS proxies (from Tor or the list on samair.ru) If you want something more lightweight look into MirandaIM (i’m not sure of this software’s proxy capabilities).

You might also want to look at connecting to meebo through https https://meebo.com/ because the local network admin might not have blocked it. Also, try using meebo by bypassing DNS: https://72.51.55.10/ others IPs are listed here: forum.meebo.com :: View topic – meebo ip address You can verify that these IPs are indeed owned by meebo (and not an impostor) by using IP Whois from a service like DNSstuff

A list of web instant messengers can be found: https://bigblueball.com/forums/local_links.php?catid=5

I’ll include some more here. Note: Some of these do not connect to all of the messenger services.
eBuddy, m.heysan, KoolIM, ILoveIM, Mabber, http://imo.im/, SNIMMER, IMUnitive, MessengerFX, IMhaha, oyco, Communication Tube, http://express.instan-t.com/, and of course, as the above post mentions, Qnext

if you’re more adventurous, have highspeed (and fast enough upload speed) internet at home, and want to be regarded as a hero by the rest of your peers try Yafumato. It will help you setup a web messenger of your own. Your IP will most probably change frequently (at least monthly — if not– you can force it to change) and therefore you’ll be able to connect no matter how many times your network administrator blocks it. Eventually, either you’ll be fired or the network admin will give up.

You might also want to invest in a laptop with a powerful wireless card that has an antenna. This will help you find open wireless networks near your workplace that will allow you to bypass your network admin all together.

Censorship is hard on the internet. Unless the network administrator is looking at each packet himself and is blocking access to all encrypted traffic you should be able to connect to whatever you want to.

@Gandalf 224791 wrote:

Wow dude, sounds like you are paranoid. Not that you shouldn’t be… ;)Actually, installing spyware without permission is illegal inside the USA. The trouble is, most users are too stupid to pay attention to the long End User License Agreements (EULA)[/quote]
You’re ignorant of the facts. I’m not talking about bull**** EULAs put out by corporations on proprietary software. I’m talking about the US government coming over to your house (for whatever reason — maybe they think you’re a criminal) — or injecting spyware executables inside downloads — and installing spyware on your box. They HAVE done this before! There is no permission asked. none. This spyware is not installed to spy on your unencrypted internet traffic — all of the tubes in the US (and other countries) are already tapped by various federal agencies (NSA, FBI) They install key loggers (spyware) so they can spy on your encrypted communications!

I’m not talking about “ALEX JONES”-type conspiracies either. This is factual information that can be pulled from reliable/main stream news agencies. It has also been defended by the US governments as legitimate: United States v. Scarfo (Key-Logger Case)

Quote:

Spyware computer searches are illegal in Germany, where people are sensitive about police surveillance due to the history of the Nazis’ Gestapo secret police and the former East German Stasi.

So, as you can clearly see from this quote and the above case file, the US government is engaging in practices that are illegal for the Germany government to engage in because those actions are reminiscent of the Nazi Gestapo and East German Stasi. What does that say about the current US Government?

@Gandalf 224791 wrote:

I just don’t think they are that competent to pull something like that off. Have you been to the DMV lately? :D[/quote]Yes I’ve been to the DMV — but remember it’s not run by the federal government. Its run by the state and city governments — which are too stupid to even decide weather to increase sin taxes or allow more casinos. The FBI and NSA (Federal Agencies in the USA) already have boxes installed at all major data centers that can spy on unencrypted data. The telecommunication companies that allow this to happen might even be immune to any legal actions for assisting the federal government in spying. There’s nothing left to pull. It has already happened.

@Gandalf 224791 wrote:

As for tapping, maybe the German police should check out Peter Cox’s SIPtap. Cox has created a program that can be installed via a trojan or at the ISP level and record VoIP conversations as a WAV file. I’m not sure if it would work with Skype or not, but it sounds like this nut may not be so hard to crack after all? [/quote]
SIPtap is intended only for unencrypted communications. As you can clearly see from the article (if you even bothered to read it) the German government (according to their own statements) isn’t capable of spying on encrypted VoIP packets from Skype (which enables encrypted communications on default). Plus SIPtap is only capable of processing data from non-Skype (aka only softwares that use the Session Initiation Protocol) softwares. Skype uses a proprietary (nonstandard, closed) method of communication.

The article isn’t speaking of unencrypted communications — which are already spied on by various governments worldwide (throughly documented– just look). It’s talking about how the German Police are saying that they cannot break Skype’s encryption scheme.

My previous comments were related to how the German government is reluctant to engage in some activities (spy-software) that have already been engaged in by the US government. They are even reluctant to engage in actions similar to their previous actions (Java Anon Proxy incident).

I don’t know how true this article can be. First of all Skype is closed source software. There is no way to verify German Police or Ebay’s own (if existent) security claims. It could also be that German Police do know how to break Skype’s supposed encryption (which uses AES and RSA according to Wikipedia) but are in the middle of a disinformation campaign to get the public to believe something that is false.

Too bad it’s not illegal in the USA — as the US government has used spyware on its citizens computers in the past to gain encryption pass phrases. I guess us Americans just love and trust the police and government with all our hearts,brains,souls,etc.

German Police (BKA) have, in the past, ordered specific closed source ‘anonymity’ softwares (e.g. Java Anon Proxy) to include back doors/ enable spying by their government.

With all that said, I have to admit there is no FOSS voice chat solution, that I know of, that is similar to Skype in terms of its supposed security.

Edit: I have just learned of Zfone. It is a free and open source (dual licensed) and sits on top of your existing VoIP software. Binaries are available for Linux, Windows (only XP) and Mac OS X.

Unfortunately it is in its beta stages and for some reason Phil ZImmernann makes you register (and agree to some garbage) before you are able to download the source or binaries — for now. 🙁 I wouldn’t use it until the final version is out — which is supposed to be released under GPL.

IMHO, avast! Home Edition is the best free antivirus solution for Windows. This is mainly because it is modular. You only install the modules you want to. I usually install Web, Standard, and Network. Network is a basic Intrusion Prevention System. Web scans your HTTP traffic through a transparent proxy (but I don’t really notice any slowdowns). Standard is just scans files in the background. Probably my most favorite feature of avast! Home Edition is that you can schedule a boot time scan. This is tremendously useful because it runs BEFORE Windows runs — so it cannot (easily) be affected by malicious software. I usually disable skins and VRDB generation because I don’t find those features useful. Also, avast! Home Edition is also updated a lot — which is really nice. More information can be found on Wikipedia’s avast! page.

If you want to pay for an antivirus solution I’d suggest Kaspersky. I used it for a while a couple of years ago. It was updated hourly — amazing! I used Personal Pro but it has been since discontinued. I think they bundle spyware fighting solutions (but i’m not sure so don’t quote me) with all their antivirus now — which makes me mad. I still use their Free File Scan online when i download files under 1MB that might be infected — I cannot divulge details here. Kaspersky is real good at going inside archives and scanning files — i’ve never seen an antivirus product that is as meticulous as Kaspersky. Another great feature of Kaspersky is that they have tons of mirrors — worldwide. All of you non-US folks must hate American software release groups that don’t provide download mirrors in your region.

— ranting below this line —

Neither Norton (owned by Symantec) or McAfee (both HQ in California USA) can stand up to either one of these solutions. They used to be leading (probably still are in terms of number-of-installs because of mass distributions via PC vendors — not because of technical superiority) Anti-Virus solutions but then they started to lock down computers so that not even the user would find it useful. While you’re using McAfee or Norton you cannot connect to IRC (without putting in some effort) because they believe that you are too stupid to.

The average joe no longer has any control over their computer. Soon we’ll have even less control — with Trusted Computing chips, DRM’d software, and further lockdown of the Internet by large (monopolistic) ISPs (or governments) who don’t believe in freedom.

Of course, if you switch to a REAL operating system — like Linux — you won’t have to deal with viruses. Your computer is fully controlled by YOU — the user. If you want to install closed source applications (or drivers) you can but unlike Windows most of the software you’ll use day to day (the kernel, and X) is completely free (as in speech) software. Sure you can replace almost everything in Windows with free (as in speech) alternatives — but you can’t replace the heart of the OS — you can’t replace the Windows Kernel. It will always remain closed source. Linux, on the other hand, is (almost) completely modular. You don’t need to use Linus’s vanilla kernel if you don’t want to. You can ‘easily’ change anything (depending on your skill level). Anyway, that’s just my useless rant. Sorry for wasting your time.

— ranting above this line —

Really? I haven’t been on AIM recently (everyone i knew disappeared into the real world.) IIRC, when i wasn’t talking to other people i was checking their profiles. It was like getting to know them a little better by getting some information about their lives. i guess AIM profiles have been mostly replaced with myspace and facebook pages in the last year. On the internet you used to get to know a person little by little (like in real life)… but now you know all their intimate details straight up by viewing their myspace page. There’s no point in meeting someone online anymore. I dunno, maybe i’m crazy… this is just how i feel these days — there are no longer intimate relationships formed online.

I doubt this is a problem with Pidgin itself but with your Windows XP configuration. This happens in Windows XP when you disable all OS-related sounds. Because no ‘alert’ wav file exists in your current sound theme Windows XP chooses to sound off from the internal speaker. This can be useful if something really has gone wrong but it isn’t when you’re doing mundane tasks like adjusting the volume or hitting backspace for non-existent text.

You can fix this problem in a variety of ways.
disable (unplug from motherboard / set a jumper) the internal speaker via hardware: How can I disable / enable the internal speaker?
replace the “Default Beep” in Sound and Audio Deices Properties with a blank wav file generated using Sound Recorder: windows volume replacement – Page 3 – Phoenix Labs
disable XPs use of the Internal Speaker via the registry: How To Disable Internal Speaker
more information: Volume Control in Notification Area Uses Internal Speaker Rather Than External Speakers for Ding .WAV File

you could 1) restrict your search to only forums that you can read by using the listbox on the search page, 2) subscribe to all the forums that you wish to receive results from then restrict your search using the listbox on the search page, 3) type -International as one of your keywords, 4) use this Greasemonkey script to filter your search results — probably best solution because BBB starts to strip search characters after a certain limit, 5) complain.

When I used Windows the only ‘firewall’ i used was ISS’s BlackICE PC Defender. It wasn’t a real software firewall. It’s more of an Intrusion Detection/Prevention System and because of this it was very lightweight. It kept people out of my system even if I hadn’t updated Windows (or Internet Explorer) in a while (especially in paranoid mode). It was most useful when i was directly connected to the Internet (not behind a NAT router) via dial up.

Later on in its product cycle ISS decided to add Application Protection to BlackICE. I never used that feature because I feel like I have (or should have) more control over what is on my system than what is coming into it.

Alas, ISS was bought out by IBM and they decided (not immediately but eventually) to shutdown the BlackICE project. I’m disappointed.

If you’re still really interested in an IDS/IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) to put in front of your computer I suggest you look into Snort (An old article about Snort at Security Focus). Snort is VERY complicated but it’s worth it. Some suggest that Snort should be run on a linux (or FreeBSD) box in front (handles all of your traffic– like a ‘router’) of your computer (so you won’t notice it hogging CPU cycles) but there is a Windows Binary available if you’re interested. There are also lots of books available on Snort (at least four). This list of Snort Resources might also be of interest (although it was last modified in 2005). You’ll have to recompile Snort if you want to run it as an IPS.