Activists can protect their communication by hiding their IP

Hiding your IP has a bad rap out there for video pirates and people seeking illicit material on the Internet. But it’s not only swarthy characters that hide out in Internet cafes (wait, do they still exist?) and use IP switchers to hide their identity.

While people in the United States, Canada and Europe enjoy fairly open and transparent media and communication I would have to say that most people in this world do not enjoy the same level of freedom as those citizens experience.

Over the years we have had hundreds people of people reach out to us at Green Prophet wanting to tell us about atrocities happening in their backyards; in their cities; in their provinces then their countries but they know that whistleblowing or reporting something that might seem just like chemical contamination by a factory or illegal bird hunting or the dying of a great lake might wind them up in jail or even worse you might disappear.

That’s what happens in places like Iran. That’s what happens in countries like Egypt where we had a high level managers working on a project for an energy company tell us about toxic nuclear radiation being handled by an unqualified group of local Egyptians exposed to deadly levels irradiation on a daily basis.  And even if you do happen to live in a place like the United States which seems liberal you still have to be careful about what you talk about and what know if it connected to big business and government and powerful people.

So what we’re saying and what we’re going to tell you now it’s not about breaking the law it’s about making sure that you’re well protected if you were going to report and environmental catastrophe or social injustice or something illegal.

But if your intuition tells you that you should do what you’re doing and you should find a way to hide your tracks: a way to hide your IP address. There are plenty of guides on the internet that will teach you how to hide your IP address and it usually involves working with some sort of online company that can provide you with an alternate IP from any other country in the world.  There are services that are free and others that require small monthly payment; in my opinion it’s better to pay a little then to deal with the hassle of trying to figure out all the services, and to sift through what’s legitimate and what’s not.

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Bhok Thompson
Author: Bhok Thompson

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