Let's assume you have Quicksilver running, and you know how
to chain remailers to be securely anonymous.

What else do you need to know?

One of the biggest giveways for somebody trying to be
anonymous is his writing style.

It's hard to change your writing style, it's hard even 
to be aware that you _have_ a writing style.

Aside from being aware that you do have a noticeable
writing style, you should try to post through remailers
even for the most harmless of posts.

If somebody spots similarities between your posts, all
they can guess is that anonymous poster A may be the
same as anonymous poster B.

Web sites that you visit, log your ip - they can find
out who you are if they want to or if they are served
a search warrant.

If you look up certain information just before it gets
sent out as an anonymous newsgroup post, you have created
a link between your visit to the web site and your post.

It is possible to obscure your connection to a web site
from everybody by using two programs: Tor and Privoxy.
They aren't hard to set up and I hope to go into how to
set them up later.

If you like, download them and try to set them up.
http://tor.eff.org/  for tor
http://www.privoxy.org/  for privoxy.

You will need to make some minor adjustments to your
browser configuration to use them.  Don't bother using
Internet Explorer, since it requires the installation 
of a third program; it's crap anyway. Download the firefox
browser from http://www.mozilla.org/. I think the Opera
browser is also ready-to-use as far as Tor and Privoxy go.

And when you set it up for use with Tor and Privoxy, make
sure you turn off Java and Javascript.

What I do is to use two different browsers. One of them does
not hide any information about me, and has Java and Javascript
turned on; the other uses Tor and Privoxy, and has the java
stuff turned off.

Test your anonymity by going to http://www.whatismyip.com and
http://www.stilllistener.com/checkpoint1/Java/

If those two sites can't come up with your real ip, then
you should be nicely hidden.

Once you have these running on your firefox browser,
you can set up free email addresses with various free web
services. That way, you can use a 'from' address that
points to your web email address, and retrieve the mail
there without anyone knowing who it is that is retrieving
the mail.

Until you start using Tor and Privoxy, keep in mind that 
visits to web sites are logged. They know who you are.


PERSONAL / FAKE FROM ADDRESSES

I mentioned using a 'from' address; also that, in order 
to use it, the last remailer in your chain has to be a
remailer that supports personal 'from' addresses.

To find out which remailers currently allow that, take a
look at http://pinger.bananasplit.info/from.html and make
sure you use one of the listed remailers as the last one
in your chain.



Questions? ask in alt.privacy.anon-server