Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: 5aliveguy on August 16, 2013, 09:41 pm

Title: Avatars?
Post by: 5aliveguy on August 16, 2013, 09:41 pm
Is uploading a pic from your pc to sr forums for an avatar safe?
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: dotgoat on August 16, 2013, 11:39 pm
Yep, it's traveling over the same anonymized connection that everything else is traveling over.  What you want to make sure of is it doesn't have any metadata info.  For example if it was a picture taken with an iphone it will have the exact geolocation coordinates embedded in exif.  There's probably utilities out there specifically for this but I like XnView as a general purpose image viewer and it allows to see, modify, and completely remove all exif/iptc/whatever other metadata there is.

If you just grabbed a pic off the internet then it's not really an issue.
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: dotgoat on August 16, 2013, 11:41 pm
FWIW I just grabbed my avatar and checked and it has no exif info in it.  I don't have the source image anymore so don't know if it had any to begin with.
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: ripthesystem on August 16, 2013, 11:44 pm
dotgat has given you a pretty solid explanation already, but I would also say use your common sense and don't use anything that could be connected to you personally or anything overtly obviously related to your personal behaviours (for example, clearly defining political ideals as I have done could be somewhat unwise as if you;re investigated it could offer a tenuous connection for them to base further questioning/investigation on at a stretch).
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: dotgoat on August 16, 2013, 11:52 pm
(for example, clearly defining political ideals as I have done could be somewhat unwise as if you;re investigated it could offer a tenuous connection for them to base further questioning/investigation on at a stretch).

Whereas my avatar just makes it seem like I have goat fetish, if they're in trees.
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: dotgoat on August 16, 2013, 11:54 pm
Whereas my avatar just makes it seem like I have goat fetish, if they're in trees.

Which I guess would be a good base for further questioning...
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: 5aliveguy on August 17, 2013, 02:57 am
Whereas my avatar just makes it seem like I have goat fetish, if they're in trees.

Which I guess would be a good base for further questioning...

I lol'd ;)

Thank you both for answering. I was worried it could leave a data trail of some kind.

If I run tails off a usb do I need to encrypt the usb?
Title: Re: Avatars?
Post by: new dreams on August 17, 2013, 06:10 am
you don't need to however it wouldn't be a bad idea to have it encrypted.