How to Browse the Internet Like a Boss

1) Download VMware for your computer at [https://www.vmware.com/support]. Accept every question the installation program asks.

2) Download an operating system for your virtual machine. Linux is always good- try Ubuntu at [http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop]. (Of course, you can test one of those fishy systems if you wish; the rest of these instructions are assuming that you installed Ubuntu.)

3) Download TrueCrypt at [http://www.truecrypt.org/].

4) Open TrueCrypt and press "Create Volume".

5) Select "Create a file container". Next.

6) Select "Standard TrueCrypt Volume". Next.

7) "Select File" and navigate to the folder in which you wish to store the Volume. The desktop is key for easy access. Next.

8) Select "AES" for Encryption Algorithm and "RIPEMD-160" for Hash Algorithm. Next.

9) Select an appropriate size: probably about 7 gigabytes will do fine. Next.

10) Specify the password. Use a strong password; see [https://sslimgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png] for details on how to make one of those. Next.

11) Leave the "Cluster" setting at its default. Click "Format". This should begin the creation of the Volume; it may take several hours to finish. Go ahead and do something else for a while. Watch a few Doctor Who or Sherlock episodes off your DVR. When it is finished ...

12) Open VMware and "Create a New Virtual Machine".

13) In the screen that pops up, select "Install disc image file (ISO):" and browse to the Ubuntu package you downloaded. Next.

14) Fill out the account information. Use a strong password like the one for the TrueCrypt Volume: the same one for convenience, or a different one for security. BE SURE TO KEEP THEM SEPARATE IN YOUR HEAD. Next.

15) Make a name for the machine and place it in the TrueCrypt Volume.

16) Decide how much space you are going to give the virtual machine. If you only plan to browse the internet from this machine, you can allocate a relatively small amount of space like 5 gigabytes. If you wish to do more, set it higher. Select the "Store virtual disk as a single file" option. Next.

17) Finish. If you are asked to download "VMware Tools", do so.

18) Access the TrueCrypt Volume with your password, open VMWare, and start your Virtual Machine.

19) Decide whether you want to use Tor or i2p (or both). Here are the pros and cons:

Benefits of Tor over I2P
- Much bigger user base; much more visibility in the academic and hacker communities; benefits from formal studies of anonymity, resistance, and performance; has a non-anonymous, visible, university-based leader
- Has already solved some scaling issues I2P has yet to address
- Has significant funding
- Has more developers, including several that are funded
- More resistant to state-level blocking due to TLS transport layer and bridges (I2P has proposals for - - - "full restricted routes" but these are not yet implemented)
- Big enough that it has had to adapt to blocking and DOS attempts
- Designed and optimized for exit traffic, with a large number of exit nodes
- Better documentation, has formal papers and specifications, better website, many more translations
- More efficient with memory usage
- Tor client nodes have very low bandwidth overhead
- Centralized control reduces the complexity at each node and can efficiently address Sybil attacks
- A core of high capacity nodes provides higher throughput and lower latency
- C, not Java

Benefits of I2P over Tor
- Designed and optimized for hidden services, which are much faster than in Tor
- Fully distributed and self organizing
- Peers are selected by continuously profiling and ranking performance, rather than trusting claimed capacity
- Floodfill peers ("directory servers") are varying and untrusted, rather than hardcoded
- Small enough that it hasn't been blocked or DOSed much, or at all
- Peer-to-peer friendly
- Packet switched instead of circuit switched
- Implicit transparent load balancing of messages across multiple peers, rather than a single path
- Resilience vs. failures by running multiple tunnels in parallel, plus rotating tunnels
- Scale each client's connections at O(1) instead of O(N) (Alice has e.g. 2 inbound tunnels that are used by all of the peers Alice is talking with, rather than a circuit for each)
- Unidirectional tunnels instead of bidirectional circuits, doubling the number of nodes a peer has to compromise to get the same information.
- Protection against detecting client activity, even when an attacker is participating in the tunnel, as tunnels are used for more than simply passing end to end messages (e.g. netDb, tunnel management, tunnel testing)
- Tunnels in I2P are short lived, decreasing the number of samples that an attacker can use to mount an active attack with, unlike circuits in Tor, which are typically long lived.
- I2P APIs are designed specifically for anonymity and security, while SOCKS is designed for functionality.
- Essentially all peers participate in routing for others
- The bandwidth overhead of being a full peer is low, while in Tor, while client nodes don't require much bandwidth, they don't fully participate in the mixnet.
- Integrated automatic update mechanism
- Both TCP and UDP transports
- Java, not C

If you decide on Tor, go to [https://www.torproject.org/download/download] and download the Tor Browser Bundle for Linux. If you want i2p, go to [http://www.i2p2.de/download] and download i2p for Linux.

20) After the download is complete, go and delete the regular old Firefox and start browsing! Your actual computer won't get any viruses or such that you contract through browsing because of the virtual machine. Your IP address is difficult to find because of your browser, and you have access to .onion and/or .i2p sites! Welcome to the Internet!