I went to the Apple store near me and purchased a one-year subscription to Mobileme service. Note that although the service offers many features that are specific for Mac users, it also has a lot to offer Windows users. For example, if you use iTunes on your windows machine, it will sync with your iTunes library. The subscription is a boxed product at the store. I paid cash, and politely declined when the clerk asked for my name and address. No problems, although I could have given my ghost address intentionally if I wanted to seed that address on another mailing list.

At a nearby coffee shop that I never use, I went online and configured the subscription. When the setup software asked for a credit card (which would be used to renew the subscription after one year), I unchecked that option. I knew this would be possible from a previous conversation with the staff at the Apple store.

I now have 20 GB storage available to me online. It is password protected, but I consider that inadequate, so the files I move up to the me.com account are already encrypted using Truecrypt. In addition, I can have a public folder to allow a friend or business contact to upload or download files, again password protected. And finaly, I get an email address in my ghost name and address that looks more legitimate than a hotmail or gmail account.

Next, I use the account along with an iPod Touch that I purchased with cash and registered to my ghost name and address. If you're not familiar with this device, in addition to being an iPod, it is also a PDA, and a wi-fi access device that will allow you to receive and send email, browse websites, etc., without using a laptop. I see this as a cheap ($200-300 ) device that I can afford to dedicate to my ghost name, cheaper than a laptop and small enough to fit in a pocket. The mac address for this device will never be associated with any name buy my ghost address. So, I now have an anonymous email address w/ghost name, ghost address, and an anonymous portable device for email and limited browsing. And 20 gb of anonymous storage I can access with browser from any computer in the world that has an internet connection.

One way is to edit the word list with words of your choosing.

... Thanks, Zack, for checking the keyword list and letting us know that it may need editing.

"... The police have neither the time, the manpower, or the motive to track down the "everyday citizen." 22-year-old Philip Markoff was a special case, with terrific local pressure to solve the multiple crimes."

While it is true that your local police are busy doing other things, the danger of IP tracking is very real. The simple fact is that unless you use very sophisticated IP and MAC address obfuscation techniques and you are extremely careful about using proxy servers and other tracking avoidance techniques, your computer's MAC and IP addresses will lead the police directly to your box if they have a reason to look for you. The FBI techniques mentioned in another comment, including key logger programs can and are used against even low-level criminals such as a teenager sending bomb threats to his school.

So, people need to understand that absent three-letter-agency immune HTBI level four+ lifestyles, everyone should assume as a matter of course that the police can, and are looking over your shoulder any time you log on to the internet and act accordingly. The techniques are so sophisticated, and even metropolitan PD's now have computer crime divisions (usually looking for kiddie porn purveyors) that tracking an IP and MAC address is a matter of punching a few buttons and making a couple of calls to an ISP.

It's worth repeating that Jack's methods are intended to give you greater PRIVACY, not conceal illegal activities. The most valuable part of Jack's recommendations is the mindset and lifestyle of protecting your privacy by being INVISIBLE. If they don't know you're there, they're unlikely to bother you.

As a former LEO, and before I became an LEO, I had a motto: "If you don't want the police to be interested in what you're doing, don't do things that the police find interesting." But the really important thing for those interested in privacy and liberty to keep track of is what, under contemporary conditions and government policy, the police find "interesting" enough to dedicate resources to investigating, which changes with the political winds.

That being said, I do have an interesting link to a module available for the Firefox web browser. It sends random queries to Google and other search engines to obfuscate your actual searches and reduce the ability of Google to create a useful user profile by creating search-engine "static" that renders their data aggregation useless. It does so in a way that keeps the search engines from classifying your IP address as a spam or DOS attack site. There is another module, called NoScript, available from the Mozilla (Firefox) add-ons site that allows you to block scripts on web sites. One script you can block is Google Analytics, which is their data aggregator. It also blocks web ads very nicely.

Submitted Link #1: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/TrackMeNot/...

The police are able to and will use these technologies to track down a criminal. But what would stop them from tracking the everyday citizen?

... The police have neither the time, the manpower, or the motive to track down the "everyday citizen." 22-year-old Philip Markoff was a special case, with terrific local pressure to solve the multiple crimes.