many people who ask such questions have too much focus on changing IP addresses and completely forget about much more important things.
From my personal experience, I know about a case where a fairly experienced hacker used left-hand SIM's, one-time emails, VPNs, and threw money through the chain of payment systems and left-hand phones. In other words, he tried quite hard, but they took him.
It's not that you shouldn't try to hide your IP address, it's that it's completely pointless if you don't understand other aspects of anonymity.1. Anonymity in social networks
If you registered in VK (a social network), specifying your phone number, and then connected to VK via Tor, in order to write in the official group of the Zadrishchensk City Administration: "Deputy of the second convocation of the City Duma S. S. Nikiforov is a thief."
Does this mean that you are anonymous — after all, you used Tor? It doesn't mean no. If only because a real phone number is linked to your social network account. Accordingly, the IP address is not particularly necessary for your identification.2. Anonymity and Cookies
Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored in your web browser after the site has sent them to you. If you visited the site, received your cookies, then reconnected via Tor and wrote in the comments something like: "Deputy of the second convocation of the City Duma Petrov D. S. is also a thief", then the cookie can link the author of the comment and the user who previously logged in with a different IP address. Cookies are designed to identify the user regardless of your IP address.3. Many sites store IP addresses of previous actions
For example, you have registered a VPN account that you will connect to via Tor. But I registered you from my IP (because Tor is slow, and in general, that site does not accept connections from the Tor network).
Will you be anonymous if you connect to a VPN via Tor? No, because information about previous operations with the IP address has already been saved.4. I will buy a VPN (or VPS server to set up OpenVPN) and will be anonymous
Even if you read the third point and went to register via Tor, but at the same time use wallets that can lead to you, then there is no question of any anonymity.
Moreover, when buying one-time SIM cards and logging in to wallet sites, you also need to remember your anonymity, otherwise it's all just pointless.5. OpenVPN is very good, but not for anonymity
If we recall the original purpose of VPN networks, it turns out that virtual private networks, within which computers scattered around the world can access each other's local network resources. At the same time, traffic is exchanged in encrypted form, but this traffic is encrypted only for an external observer, but not for the server and clients of the OpenVPN network.
For this reason, if you have purchased a free or paid VPN account, then be prepared that the server owner can do ANYTHING with your traffic and keeps activity logs — what requests were made from which client. How many of them are "honeypots" (traps) and record activity is impossible to say, but in my opinion, 100% of paid and free VPN providers do this.
If you want to use a VPN, use your own one.6. There are 1000 and 1 ways to find out your real IP address
There are a huge variety of options. From the simplest – send a link to a controlled site and view the IP (if communicating via an anonymous messenger) or a file with a Trojan to quite sophisticated ways.
7. If you use any closed source software for illegal activities, then a backdoor is 100% installed there
Backdoors can also be found in legitimate closed-source software — as a hard-to-detect vulnerability that the manufacturer knows about, or just an ordinary stupid, cork — like backdoor-such as was found, for example, in the official firmware of routers.
As for illegal closed-source software that is distributed anonymously, please tell me, well, why not install a backdoor there? The owner won't know, and even if he does, what will he do? He will go to the police and say: I bought scripts to crack the protection of stolen phones, and I installed a virus there... I don't think he will do that.
8. Lack of understanding of the simplest technical aspects of the operation of networks, servers, applications, accumulated and available information in open sources
Phishing sites of some uneducated "hackers" can be easily found simply by analyzing where the POST request goes.
Why did the "hacker" leave scripts in the archive on this site? Apparently, I just didn't know that it's very easy to track where a POST request goes, even if the HTML code is obfuscated. And there can be a lot of such "technical" punctures: a simple SSH connection password ("no one knows where my server is"), a lack of understanding of what information a researcher can access on the server, a lack of understanding of what Cloudflare is for, etc.9. The big picture
Example: infrastructure objects are being attacked and IP traces and other indirect signs lead to somewhere far away. But at the same time, the objects and methods of attack are similar to those used by a well-known hacker group.
At the very least, there is something to think about.10. Metadata in files
You need to know everything about metadata and programs to view and clean it up.
Otherwise, if you distribute files , all other anonymity measures may become useless. Approximately, as in the first paragraph, when Tor is used, but you log in to the social network under your own account.What do I need to do to make sure they don't find me?
One hundred percent guarantee is only the fact that you will not be searched…
Even if you have studied the "anonymity manuals" from cover to cover, even if it is written by an understanding person, and even if you did everything correctly, but do not understand the other aspects discussed above, then your chances of "burning down" in one of the idiotic ways discussed above are quite high.
