Privacy Tools

With CISPA on the rise, as well as other surveillance conducted by governments and big business, many people feel the need to find more security in their online experience. This page is dedicated to bringing you the best privacy tools on the internet, to protect your personal information and safeguard your data against snoopers and spooks.

 Crypto -
Do you have important trade secrets that you would like to protect? How about personal information such as passwords, financial/tax info or even those risque photos of your wife she surprisingly let you take when she had one to many glasses of wine. The solution? CRYPTO.

 In Short, cryptographic programs allow you to store information within the program using extremely complex algorithms to password protect any file you store within the program. Sometimes, it is good to use multiple encryption programs on sensitive data such as trade secrets for business and personal information.  For example: create a Truecrypt partition, then encrypt THAT partition using Kremlin - Some great crypto programs I use are:

1) Truecrypt - Safeguard your data against snoopers and/or adversaries. You create a partition, which is basically a locked folder for storing files that you can protect with a password. You can even add an image to the unlocking process for extra security measures. So a would be snoop would need to enter the password AND attach the correct picture in order to unlock your partition. You can also create a hidden partition within a partition, so an adversary forcing you to open your Truecrypt file can be duped as you open the "false" partition, which you will fill with non random files you don't care if people see.

Main features:
Algorithm Designer(s) Key Size
(Bits)
Block Size (Bits) Mode of Operation





AES J. Daemen, V. Rijmen 256 128 XTS
Serpent R. Anderson, E. Biham, L. Knudsen 256 128 XTS
Twofish B. Schneier, J. Kelsey, D. Whiting,
D. Wagner, C. Hall, N. Ferguson
256 128 XTS
AES-Twofish 256; 256 128 XTS
AES-Twofish-Serpent 256; 256; 256 128 XTS
Serpent-AES 256; 256 128 XTS
Serpent-Twofish-AES 256; 256; 256 128 XTS
Twofish-Serpent



Kremlin Encrypt - http://www.kremlinencrypt.com/

Not only does Kremlin feature secure encryption with such algorithms as Blowfish, and RC4, Kremlin does more: Kremlin builds a wall around your computer.
In its most secure setting, Kremlin uses 160 bits of encryption key. It means that if one billion computers were each searching one trillion keys per second, it would take over 1019 years to recover a file encrypted with Kremlin. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 years, much more than the life of the universe! Kremlin is so secure that the U.S. Government considers it a munition! To snoops, Kremlin is a deadly weapon.
Kremlin builds a wall around your data
  • When you log off, Kremlin clears sensitive areas of your hard disk and wipes all records of your activities.
  • Kremlin automates the process of securing your computer by scheduling itself to secure portions of your hard disk and all used memory when you log off your computer or your computer becomes idle.
  • Kremlin can automatically encrypt files and directories when you log off your computer and decrypt them when you log back on, providing a transparent way to protect your files from nosy intruders.
  • Kremlin provides a full-featured and secure text editor that automatically encrypts your documents. You can e-mail a secret memo to a co-worker from within Kremlin Text.
  • You can securely remove files from your computer by dragging them to the Kremlin Secure Recycle Bin (Windows) ot Kremlin Secure Delete (Mac OS).
  • Kremlin is cross-platform. You can encrypt your information on the PC and decrypt and use it on the Mac and vice versa.


If you are interested in more information on cryptography then I suggest heading over to this Cryptology Research website. 

A great book on the history of cryptography is "Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age" by Author Steven Levy.  The Book is extremely insightful and gives you an in depths analysis on the rise of crypto as well as some key players in the movement.


 PGP - Pretty Good Privacy -  developed by Phil Zimmerman was one of the first cryptographic programs widely available for download in the internets infancy stage.  Originally PGP used the RSA algorithm, which he did not obtain the proper license for.  Phil Zimmerman distributed PGP through a thirDjigzod party as to not get caught up in the crypto exportation laws of the early internet.  Government agencies such as the NSA were strict on crypto exportation and required key lengths to be shorter than American releases, allowing them to snoop on international adversaries in the name of national security.  After many battles with the government and their exportation laws, as well as the RSAgroup, PGP gave birth to a plethora of pro-crypto movements 
and programs

GNU Privacy Guard - GNUpg -
GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880 . GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key management system as well as access modules for all kinds of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries are available. Version 2 of GnuPG also provides support for S/MIME.


Email Encryption

Open PGP

OpenPGP is a non-proprietary protocol for encrypting email using public key cryptography. It is based on PGP as originally developed by Phil Zimmermann. The OpenPGP protocol defines standard formats for encrypted messages, signatures, and certificates for exchanging public keys.


Djigzo
Most email is sent as plain text. This means that anyone who can intercept email messages, either in transit or at rest, can read the content. Today, companies and governments realize that this is unacceptable. Email needs to be confidential, email needs to be encrypted.
DJIGZO offers open source products that help to automatically secure email and protect against unauthorized access of email in transit and at rest.
DJIGZO Email Encryption Gateway is a standards based centrally managed email server (MTA) that encrypts and decrypts your incoming and outgoing email at the gateway level. DJIGZO Email Encryption Gateway is compatible with any existing email infrastructure like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes and has support for S/MIME and PDF encryption.
Data Leak Prevention (DLP) is a module that can be used to prevent certain information to leave the organization via email. DLP can configured to filter on credit card numbers, bank account numbers, excessive amounts of email addresses or other personal information in one email message, and more. DLP is implemented as a filter on outgoing email.
BlackBerry logo DJIGZO for BlackBerry® is an add-on to the DJIGZO Email Encryption Gateway which can be used to send and receive S/MIME digitally signed and encrypted email from a BlackBerry® smartphone.
Android logo DJIGZO for Android DJIGZO for Android is an Android application which can be used to send and receive S/MIME digitally signed and encrypted email.
DJIGZO can be installed on most Linux and Unix based systems. Installation packages are available for Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat and CentOS. A ready to run virtual appliance for VMware and Hyper-V is available.

Great Articles and How-To-Guides on Encryption
PC world - how to encrypt your email
Life Hacker - how to encrypt your email - PGP
Cryptography.org - Get PGP

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