#Anonymous #IRC Suits

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When you wish to enter anonymously into an anonymous IRC room, make sure you are not wearing a clown suit and a cow bell around your neck, shouting “hey hey” at the castle from the open field, well within range of the firing gallery.

Don’t be too embarrassed, most of us have Been There. Done That. Got the Suit. And this is not new. Realise you have been strutting your stuff like this on the internet unwittingly, up until now.

Use a good tool

There are many suitable IRC tools, but I prefer Pidgin. So that’s what I am using here to illustrate dressing up differently. You can get pidgin here. It is free and runs on Windows and Linux/UNIX. It also runs on Mac, but …

Add Account

On your Buddy List, go to Accounts -> Manage and click Add on the new window that pops up. This window opens (we hope):

Set the Protocol to IRC and choose a Username. Pick a good one. Not one you are already using elsewhere, unless that is a separate identity you already kept private and doesn’t contain information on your real life.

Set the Server to one of these servers: http://www.anonops.in/index.php?id=servers and don’t worry about the password stuff here (leave it empty). You’ll set yourpassword in NickServ (see below).

SSL

Open the advanced tab, set the port to 6697 and check the “Use SSL” box.

Click Save and enable the account by clicking the check box next to the name. There should soon be a window popping up, right about … now!

NickServ

There also might pop up another tab in that window with the title: NickServ. If the NickServ tab does not appear you’re in business.

Type: /msg nickserv register yourpassword fake@email.address in the input box at the bottom of the new window that popped up.

Example: /msg nickserv register cowbell nose@clown.suit

If a NickServ tab already appeared right after you saved and enabled the account, with a message about the nickname being registered and about you having to provide a password or register another nick name, then the username you chose for your account is already taken on NickServ.  You can try getting away from that by prefixing your nickname with an _ or swapping out letters for numbers, but if that doesn’t work you need to go through the steps of creating an account again, with a new, more obfuscating nickname.

Vhost

Now you can activate your vhost. Type /join #vhost and use the !vhost command to make up your own crazy vhost in the input box at the bottom of the new tab that appears.

Example: !vhost heyhey@the.open.field

This should kick you out of the #vhost channel. Now you can look at your own vhost, and only you can. From here on, as soon as you startup pidgin and type /msg NickServ IDENTIFY yourpassword in the inputbox of the Nickserv channel, your vhost starts up automatically.

Join a chatroom

Now you can join any of the rooms and we’ll just see another anonymous suit. On your Buddy List, go to Buddies -> Join a Chat … and in the new window that pops up pick the anon server you chose to connect with, type #opnewblood in the Room box, or click on Room List and pick one.

If you still worry about being visibly foolish or not, /join #opnewblood or /join #opemmaa in the input box of any room, and ask someone to whois you. Say please to the firing gallery. They will fire back at you by telling you what host you use and you will know how others see you.

In whatever room, you can always type /help and you’ll get a list of all chat commands available to you. Type /help command, and you’ll get details on the command.

Even Better Suits

This is just a basic suit with minimal protection. Suitable for a first visit into anonimity.

Download the AnonymousCarePackageLight from the topics in one of the rooms (not all rooms have it, you will need to browse around some), and in it you will find the AnonymousSecurityStarterHandbook.pdf. It explains how to change your vhost, and much more, like how to get even better suits for a wide variety of internet occasions.

Questions? Go to #opnewblood and ask.

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