anonymity through proxy like network and encryption

[levity]

since lately the question of anonymity has risen more and more interest I’d like to post some thoughts about how to avoid that nasty problem:

The most successful attempt to obscure oneself seems to be through a proxy server, but these proxy server’s are really slow and we’d have to trust that they don’t log and reveal our identity. But why don’t setup an proxy server in each users DC client and allow users of the same hub to use them to download from others (DC should of course not log such activity). It could even be thought of routing a file through several of such proxy’s and an additional encryption would avoid that any FAKE user could log what’s been routed through his proxy.
Of course this would limit the amount of open slots and bandwidth drastically but at least we could keep on sharing.

I’m not sure (given my limited knowledge about protocols and the DC client) that this would be a failsafe attempt but I think it could. It should also be a voluntary option to activate such an proxy server in the DC client or to use them at all.

Sincerely
Marko Thiele

[cyberal]

this is an entirely new network you are talking about.. or if you want, an old one (freenet).. dc can't be modified to do this!

[levity]

Why not ??? if DC already allows connection through proxy’s.

It should not be to hard to implement a proxy in each DC client and a future that allows to manage this proxy’s.
Well it might be problematic if one uses an client that doesn’t support this kind of proxyfuture but then he could just not connect to the DC clients that have it enabled.
The status of this future (enabled or even settings) could be indicated in the description of the user. And DC would have to choose one of the other proxy’s to connect to the actual user.
If DC gets a direct connection it would just not react to it.
But well… if the hub reveals the IP’s of all the users the whole thing might just be nuts….
And jet again, I don’t know nothing of the protocol of DC nor of the code and if the makers say its not possible it might not be.
But I thougt it was worth metioning it.

Marko

[GargoyleMT]

Why not ??? if DC already allows connection through proxy’s.

And, because of the abusibility factor, DCH++ has a plugin capable of blocking people on well known proxies. On IRC, this is used much more frequently to evade bans than to try to gain some additional anonymity.