Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
Let's put it another way. Let's consider a malicious URL. Does it matter if the URL I share is from a safe search engine results page? No, because as soon as you click on the that URL, eventually you'll end up on the page anyway by clicking on the malicious URL. A bottle of poison shared in a (supposedly) safe box doesn't change a thing. It's up to you to check whether the box is worth opening, or if you have taken your anti-poison beforehand. As for free search engines, duckduckgo, startpage and ixquick are supposedly better than google and co. But it's still a service on someone else's server. Searx is a meta search engine that collects the query results from several engines, and filters the data about yourself. Or something like that, I'm not too sure actually. You can install this on your own server. But you can also use trusted servers, which technically doesn't make it much different than other search engines. But yeah, a URL is just a URL. There's no way to make it safer besides using https-everywhere yourself, and thus sharing https links automatically (except those websites that don't have https).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
Oh, so the link is supposed to not take you directly to the targeted page, but through starpage? But: 2.- The proxy won't save information about you, won't install cookies, will disable many trackers. Maybe, but the target URL most likely will. As for https, either check the URL by rewriting it instead of clicking it on (I might be wrong, but this matters only if Javascript is enabled). Or simply use https-everywhere. Same for censorship, use a VPN or Tor. To me, the proxy matters when you access the URL. A URL that leads to a search engine results page is just one more useless step, if I get this right. The URL is just an adress, like a home adress. HOW you reach the adress matters, but that's up to the user, not the URL (which is always the same, eventually).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
No, it's different. A proxy service hides your identity. HTTPS and NoScript do not do this. That being said, Tor is much more secure than just trusting a single proxy run by someone you're not even paying.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
Isn't this a case of software as a service? I think you can get free browser plugins that do all the things that proxy does, and they are under your control rather than on some server. Some examples being HTTPS everywhere and noscript. Any others?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
Using some sort of proxy service isn't necessarily "safer" or more secure. Ixquick seems trustworthy, but you can't know for sure, and if it turns out that they are malicious, using their proxy service will do harm rather than good. What's more, what's going to happen if this forum is filled with proxy links and the proxy service goes down? The forum will be filled with a bunch of useless dead links. Those proxy links are not even meant to be shared, anyway. I don't know if they persist, but regardless, those are gigantic URLs. The purpose of the proxy service is to protect your anonymity while you search.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
Again: We are a free software comunity, as such, I want to invite all the comunity to share the most secure links, that respect people's freedom and privacy. If startpage.com or ixquick are not secure and free enough I am sure there must be a better option out there, it just happens that I haven't heard of it. But I would love to hear a suggestion. I think we could both agree that Freedom is worth the inconvenience and if that means taking an little extra step just to copy a link and paste it in a search provider just to get a proxy link it is better to do so. Better than sharing non-free and privacy invasive websites and just asume that people is protected against those links. Free software is about what we share and how we share it. Not only about using a free OS.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
I understand what you mean. However, I think it is too much work, first we have to find the link on ixquick or whatever. Then we have to post it here. Why is a proxy better than just accessing the normal nets with https-everywhere and noscript? We don't know what the proxy could be up to either. They could be run by the Chinese Government or a crime syndicate in Shropshire, out to serve up man-in-the-middle attacks. Also I think if the people censoring the net (such as in China for example) are probably going to block various proxies. Ixquick is reasonably well-known, so I don't think it is an argument for posting every link in a proxy.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
I don't mean to not share the link here, what I meant is that instead of sharing http:thelink.com you share here the link that the proxy of starpage.com gives you. For some reasons: 1.- Many links are http and not https, this allows many people to see what you are looking at. the proxy has a https link so is safer. 2.- The proxy won't save information about you, won't install cookies, will disable many trackers. 3.- The proxy allows the links to be seen even where there is censorship.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
It's not as if most of us here don't have noscript, librejs, etc. And if people hang out here more than just casually they will learn about these before long. I don't think it really has much benefit to proxy through ixquick unless you are searching through it. What is the difference between opening a link from here and through ixquick?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
I don't understand: what does it do? To me a link is just a link: the end result is the same, no matter what I do.
[Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
We like to share a lot of links here, but unfortunately, some of them contain non-free javascript, cookies, advertising and trackers. But must of us don't like that kind of links, so i suggest that we begin to share links from the proxy of ixquick.com or startpage.com. It is really easy all the results on those pages have a proxy option, and we can share those links instead of the normal link. Even Richard Stallman uses it: (This link is not from ixquick proxy I now... the irony... but is because it is from stallman.org so you don't have to worry ;) ) For searching, I have mostly used DuckDuckGo for the past couple of years. It does work with JS disabled, but you have to follow a link before you search. I also sometimes use ixquick.com.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Let's make our forums safer
The picture is never shown in the first post so here is it again.
