Questions about The Eye | Eclipse Phase

Tue, 2017-11-28 14:11

#2

sysop

That is almost certainly

That is almost certainly talking about TOR and VPNs (virtual private networks): https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network

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Tue, 2017-11-28 14:17

#3

sysop

Those two pages should give

Those two pages should give you all the background you could ever want on how those work and make it a little more clear that what's visible vs. not visible under the control of the poster on the Eye. Think of the mesh ID like your IP address.

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Tue, 2017-11-28 16:30

#4

Grim G

sysop wrote:Those two pages

sysop wrote:
Those two pages should give you all the background you could ever want on how those work and make it a little more clear that what's visible vs. not visible under the control of the poster on the Eye. Think of the mesh ID like your IP address.

I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I've been down this road twice already and I still don't have a clear grasp on network communications.

Tue, 2017-11-28 17:43

#5

sysop

Hmmm - ok, let's go more old

Hmmm - ok, let's go more old school then? Home mailing addresses vs PO Boxes. At least how they are in the US. If you send someone a card with your home address as the return address, they'll know where you live. They can show up, say hi, etc, even if you're not there. But if you send the card with your PO box - then all they know is... where your PO box is. But you can open a PO box at any US post office you want to. You could even have the mail in a PO box forwarded to your home address without anyone who might send mail to the PO box knowing *where you actually live*... so it serves the same purpose of controlling how much information you're sending out with your card. So your mesh ID is your IP address is your home address. TOR or a VPN is the PO Box address that conceals that home address by being a 3rd party in the middle. That help more?

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Thu, 2017-11-30 08:03

#6

o11o1

And then the "Onion" part of

And then the "Onion" part of the routing network is like sending a letter with more, smaller letters inside it. the first letter goes to someone in ohio, who opens it, finds the smaller letter already stamped, and puts it into the mailbox so it can make it's way to texas. This second middleman opens the letter from ohio to find a third, smaller letter to california. They don't know who originally sent the letter that got to ohio. They then send their letter to calfornia, who was the actual intended recipiant, but that california person can legitimately claim they don't know who originally started the chain. That's an Onion network in principle, the center message being wrapped in layers of routing hops, with the middleman never knowing the whole chain. A properly acting middleman then burns their shredded envelopes so as to make it more secret. A malicious middleman might then track all the letters they pass and think hard about what they can deduce from the partial information. The system isn't 100% secret, but it makes eavesdroppers have to jump through a lot of hoops and makes it really tricky for them to be 100% sure someone is actually the original sender of any given message, which can be important if it's something worth filing criminal charges over.

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A slight smell of ions....

Thu, 2017-11-30 09:26

#7

sysop

Or killing for. For example,

Or killing for. For example, TOR may have a rep for criminal use, I really am not kidding, I've run into this before. But it's also quite literally a life saver for reporters and activists in many countries.

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Mon, 2017-12-04 11:44

#8

Grim G

sysop wrote:Hmmm - ok, let's

sysop wrote:
Hmmm - ok, let's go more old school then? Home mailing addresses vs PO Boxes. At least how they are in the US. If you send someone a card with your home address as the return address, they'll know where you live. They can show up, say hi, etc, even if you're not there. But if you send the card with your PO box - then all they know is... where your PO box is. But you can open a PO box at any US post office you want to. You could even have the mail in a PO box forwarded to your home address without anyone who might send mail to the PO box knowing *where you actually live*... so it serves the same purpose of controlling how much information you're sending out with your card. So your mesh ID is your IP address is your home address. TOR or a VPN is the PO Box address that conceals that home address by being a 3rd party in the middle. That help more?

If what you're saying is that, much like a PO box, you can't track where someone's mesh ID when they're using a VPN.

o11o1 wrote:
And then the "Onion" part of the routing network is like sending a letter with more, smaller letters inside it. the first letter goes to someone in ohio, who opens it, finds the smaller letter already stamped, and puts it into the mailbox so it can make it's way to texas. This second middleman opens the letter from ohio to find a third, smaller letter to california. They don't know who originally sent the letter that got to ohio. They then send their letter to calfornia, who was the actual intended recipiant, but that california person can legitimately claim they don't know who originally started the chain. That's an Onion network in principle, the center message being wrapped in layers of routing hops, with the middleman never knowing the whole chain. A properly acting middleman then burns their shredded envelopes so as to make it more secret. A malicious middleman might then track all the letters they pass and think hard about what they can deduce from the partial information. The system isn't 100% secret, but it makes eavesdroppers have to jump through a lot of hoops and makes it really tricky for them to be 100% sure someone is actually the original sender of any given message, which can be important if it's something worth filing criminal charges over.

That part I understand.

Mon, 2017-12-04 18:40

#9

sysop

Then there you go :) You've

Then there you go :) You've got it.

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I fix broken things. If you need something fixed, mention it [url=/forums/suggestions/website-and-forum-suggestions]on the suggestions board[/url]. [color=red]I also sometimes speak as website administrator and/ moderator.[/color]