I highly recommend Qubes OS for its compartmentalization and its ability to be stateless. It has the ability to route all traffic over TOR as well as a VPN. It is meant for laptops primarily, but can work with some desktop boards. It is hit or miss still.
https://www.qubes-os.org/
I really like the idea behind the stateless computing from the Qubes creator.
https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/state_harmful.pdf
At a minimum I would recommend full disk encryption with Veracrypt - https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/ - or something similar. If someone were to try to plant evidence on your computer, you at least have the encryption to protect you at rest.
To protect you while browsing, I recommend to at least use a VPN - https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ (you can buy a gift card with cash and use it to pay for the service) - if not use the TOR browser, for all research. -https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
Not sure which browsers are still affected, but don't forget about the STUN server request that can reveal your IP even if using VPN. The following is a link to test for the ip leak.
https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/
view the rest of the comments →
SoSickInside ago
I keep hearing about the Tails operating system as well. It's promoted on Wikileaks page, I think or Tor page. Not sure where I saw it.
Any thoughts?
psmith85 ago
I'd be wary of both Tor and Tails as potential honeypots.
PizzaThrowaway123 ago
So why has it been used by whistleblowers, pedos, drug dealers and the likes for the past decade or so? I forget who said it, but they said that if your "secure" network is not being used by these types of groups of people, then it is most definitely not secure.
You are doing what is called "concern trolling".
psmith85 ago
It's not trolling. I'm saying that low-tech methods that do not rely on technology 99.99% of us cannot understand or properly and independently vet may be preferable to them.