Quote Originally Posted by jamstigator
The best way to hide your IP is in plain sight: you use someone else's unsecured wireless router, in an entirely different building. That's what I do.
And you really think this makes your connection secure?

No offense, man, but cops can be stupid, but they're not THAT stupid. People freeloading of an unsecured router is quite common, and you can bet you're ass that any cop involved with computer related investigation knows it.

So, Mr. Cop decides sees your pictures of your most recent grow and decides he wants to check it out. He gets your IP info and traces it back to Sarah Jones, lawyer, age 63. He realizes immediately that she doesn't fit the profile of who he's looking for. So he goes out to the building and pops open his laptop and, sure enough, there's the unsecured router. So he can easily guess that poor Ms. Jones isn't the culprit.

But here's the real kicker...

Not only does finding this unsecurred router NOT mean the end of his search, finding it has just made his job a whole lot easier. Because if the router is unsecurred, so is every transmission you're making to it. It will take him less than 60 seconds to set up a connection with your computer and start capturing everything you transmit. And no, he doesn't need a warrant to do this, because anything that crosses the open air is considered to be in the public domain.

Oh, and one last pleasant thought....freeloading of someone else's wireless router, secured or otherwise, is a federal offense. As soon as he identifies you, he's got grounds to take you in for questioning, as well as for getting a warrant to seize your computer.