I was wondering if anyone knows of a good anonymizer program that could be put on this site. I, myself, have found a great need and concern for one going to a technologically advanced university at which any number of students could hack our server and steal credit card numbers...just an idea.
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If your credit card numbers are encrypted (for example, in KeePass) the hackers would have a very hard time getting access to them.
Sometimes "anonymizer" refers to doing things to prevent other people from tracing your connection back to you. The main way to do that is with an anonymous proxy server of some kind, or Tor. I think there has been some work on a portable Tor.
Sometimes "anonymizer" refers to software that works like an antivirus to monitor everything you do and, when it sees a potential access of some data you have told it is confidential, it blocks the transfer of that data across the network interface. In general, this would require the installation of a driver, requiring Admin privileges. If you are talking about a public computer, it is likely that you would be a "limited user"; a hacker who has compromised the machine is likely to have elevated to Admin, and could bypass any protections you put in place.
The best thing with data "at rest" on your computer (like a credit card number) is encryption, like KeePass. The best thing with confidential data you need to use (e.g. when you decrypt the credit card number so you can order a textbook online) is to make sure you are using a trusted computer and that the connection is encrypted with SSL or TLS, and you are connected to a trusted merchant.
You might be surprised how hard it is to hack into your computer if you keep the operating system and software up to date (especially on critical security updates), keep antivirus and personal firewall running, don't disable UAC on Vista, use very strong passwords (e.g. 9 characters or more, not in any dictionary, using special characters as well as letters and numbers), use different passwords for different accounts (see KeePass), and use safe computing practices like not clicking on attachments in e-mails or installing stuff you get from untrusted web sites or file sharing services. You also have to control physical access to the computer -- it is much easier to hack into the computer if one can be alone with it for a few minutes.
So KeePass would be indispensable, maybe Tor Portable, maybe Toucan with its encryption capabilities, or WinPT/GPA/Enigmail for encrypting data that you transmit across the public Internet, maybe TrueCrypt if you will have admin or be able to get the Truecrypt driver installed by an admin.
Is that what you had in mind?
MC
As far as anonymizers go i was leaning more towards a proxy or encyrption-based program and KeePass is a decent program. However, I also find the blocks at the university on some sites to be ridiculous, some image search engines are blocked. So if anyone knows of a program similar to Tor that has been converted to a portable program please let me know.
There's one thing that's similar to Tor, and that's Tor. Have you tried it? How is it deficient? (Or are you waiting for a portablized version to be released?)
About the only way to bypass those sorts of firewall policies is to get outside the firewall. There are some PPTP VPN services you can sign up for that basically tunnel your connection to a VPN server, which is outside the restrictive firewall. One question is whether you can set up a VPN like that from a locked down public computer, I haven't tried.
If you can identify an Internet host with ssh login, you can use a dynamic tunnel (e.g. with PuTTY Portable) that turns that host into a SOCK5 proxy. That's another way to tunnel your connection outside of the firewall. There exist Internet host accounts that are fairly inexpensive. Depends on how much it is worth to you.
I've known college students who end up renting an off-campus apartment just to get away from an overly restrictive firewall.
MC
I am very pleased with how Tor has performed but I am in need of a portable version, re: my first post, but I am thankfully for your help.
provided is for portable tor...
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
I can't see your link.
It's actually a link to search results. You can replicate them yourself by going to the top of the page and putting "Tor Portable" and maybe "Vidalia" into the search box, and clicking Search. There are a bunch of entries.
The one that seems the most interesting is
Can you see that okay?
MC
http://portabletor.sourceforge.net/
http://www.download.com/Torpark/3000-2356_4-10586817.html
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
yeah i guess that works, but i'd rather have an official paf app made similar to TorPark which just used firefox portable but with tor. torpark won't do because it's too outdated though. possibly JonDo Portable but i haven't really tried it https://www.jondos.de/en/download/windows