- Zhang San
- Feb 20, 2018
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This has stemmed from a great bad idea of mine where I wanted to set up a fake facebook account to gently troll a group in my local area. I don't want to spend thread legitimising the thoughts behind my actions, but its a group full incel women haters I wanted to infiltrate and ridicule. Regardless of the merits of the above, I started to think about how I might be able to do the whole thing entirely anonymously as a blackhat hacker assassin. 
Please pick holes in my plan below, and give insightful anecdotes about how easy you find staying anonymous while surfing the internet:
- I immediately realise its not feasible to set up my own new Facebook account, as would need to source (a) pictures and profile and (b) (to my discovery after an initial foiled attempt) a sim card for phone verification. I think all sim cards need ID these days and I would also have to spend on an old phone without GPS tracking.
- Instead decide to buy a fake Facebook account online from a Russian fake news farmer.
- Visit a convenience store with hood up, but not looking too much like I will rob the place. Buy a $50 prepaid credit card that requires no ID. I think if government really wanted to discover me they could probably track this to to me, but I risk it as I'm not aware of any current white-knight eradication program. I definitely feel like Mr. Robot at this stage.
- Go home to my nerd cave and:
- Install clean OS in virtualbox so no risk of cookies in browser.
- Install Firefox and use prepaid card to purchase VPN from our sponsors. For this I need an anonymous e-mail so I sign up to protonmail.
- Sign in to VPN and download Tor browser.
At this stage this VirtualBox -> VPN -> Tor seems like overkill and I am not technical enough to know if this has even truly worked. Anyhow I'm now browsing a dogshit slow internet to look for Russian fake news Facebook account sellers. I use duckduckgo to find something rather than any weird onion site.
- Jackpot. It turns out there are suppliers happy to sell you anything between 1 and 10,000 accounts for Facebook, twitter, soundcloud, etc etc. Payment for my chosen supplier is by CC or various cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately my CC is not accepted by their Russian payments site, so I have to gets Bitcoins.
- New to Bitcoins, I download a desktop wallet called Electrum, and try to buy with my prepaid CC.
- Nowhere seems to sell Bitcoins without needing ID for a driving licence and so on. I consider using Photoshop to create fake ID although this feels illegal so I get scared and look for another way.
- Eventually find somewhere that will let you buy Second Life Linden Dollars with my CC, and then convert those to Bitcoins and withdraw them. There is a 48 hour turnaround because my account was created under suspicious circumstances.
- I now possess Bitcoins, although at a considerable discount from my initial prepaid CC given all the conversion fees. Being anonymous is expensive.
Lessons learnt so far:
- The internet inside my VM running a VPN with Tor feels so slow I am bound to make a mistake at some stage and accidentally let loose on my main PC.
- I think I am probably not that anonymous if my prepay CC can be linked to a particular store that has CCTV.
- I wonder if all my attempts to go "underground" might even attract more attention without doing any of this.
- The fake Russian facebook transaction doesn't go through. I think I messed up my Bitcoin payment. I probably need to start again. Maybe this time I will try from a local cyber cafe (do these even exist still?).
Is anyone really successfully able to be anonymous online all of the time, giving up the modern conveniences of a fast browser, using google and allowing cookies etc all seem to make it not worth it.
Posted from my parachute account.
Zhang San fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Sep 8, 2018
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Sep 8, 2018 17:57
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Apr 26, 2024 07:55
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- Zhang San
- Feb 20, 2018
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i've got a few thoughts but why are you approaching this as a single person? the group's going to be active on other sites as well so how far are you willing to go in infiltrating? how long as you expecting to spend per-day? how long for? what's the end goal?
The end goal is not a take down of some lame facebook group, but was the catalyst for thinking about how difficult it is to genuinely be anonymous online. Turns out not very for what I thought would be a simple enough task. The purpose was to consider online anonymity.
Oooor you could do something more constructive with your time instead of committing several crimes just to...troll some idiots online.
Thank you for your contribution. Would it make you feel better if I said I was a Chinese dissident trying to make myself heard on social media? Or a gay muslim living in IS controlled middle east in desperate need of sex toys. Nothing in the OP is illegal, unless you mean "Cyberbullying"
Fun Fact: There haven't been anonymous prepaid credit/debit cards in the US since the Patriot Act in 2001. You can buy them, but they have to be activated with a valid ID before they can be spent.
Good luck with your money laundering efforts, I hope you teach those incels how wacky they are!
I didn't know that. I wonder if you could pick up prepaid CC cards in another country for use where no ID was required? From my extensive experience watching The Wire, money laundering at any plausible scale seems much easier using semi-legitimate businesses that handle a lot of cash, e.g. arcades, launderettes and printing shops.
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Sep 9, 2018 06:06
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Sep 8, 2018 17:57
