First off, I am a hacker, a good hacker if you will (or at least good for me - lol), that is I make my living identifying hacks, cleaning them up, and securing the aftermath. That said. There is no way to completely hide yourself, only place deterrents in from of potential listeners so they'll go chasing easier targets. If you're on the internet, at some point your traffic will be intercepted (it doesn't matter where you live either, all this crap going on about the NSA spying, and countries giving the US a hard time about it is smoke & mirrors, they all do it. If agencies don't get it, other hackers interested in profit will get it, you're in the public domain, get over it).
However, there's no need to be completely paranoid either. To get busted by someone tracking/reading your posts would be extremely unlikely. If you think these drug enforcement agencies have the time or budget to worry about some guy growing a few plants in their house, then I have some swamp land in Florida for you bro... They don't and can't chase everyone, their budgets allow only going for the bigger guns. To track and identify someone takes time, effort/money (that's the good part for me), and eventually a warrant of some sort has to be issued, so it better be something worthwhile and justifiable.
At the same time, if you're reckless and don't at least try to cover your tracks, you may as well walk into a cop station and tell them you're growing. But none of that has anything to do with being tracked on the internet. It has to do with common sense things like:
Never telling ANYONE outside maybe your extremely close family (maybe your brother if you know he's cool with it, like my long time partner knows because I don't hide anything from her and she helps me, particularly handy for things like trimming which I hate and she loves!!). This is the most likely way you'd get busted, hands down, and has nothing to do with technology, it's the old school big mouth/bragger syndrome that will get you busted.
Obvious, but If you're posting here, be careful not to mention specifics or post pics that could track back to you easily
Never use your personal email address on any site like this. Create a freebie somewhere else, use it for registration and then don't use it for anything else or even connect to it again. It's not necessary (use the control panel notifications) so emailing yourself notifications is not necessary on this site. Besides, they don't modify/strip titles so if you forward yourself emails from here, you'll get the very descriptive subject lines, essentially advertising that you're growing pot. Forget the traces/hackers, just someone looking over your shoulder could give you away.
Which brings me to the second one associated with the one above, NEVER use your email or access this site from work, unless you're Ok with showing up in your companies' logging/tracking software, be prepared to explain that one. All large companies log everything for valid reasons like laws and compliance.
More technical but relevant to the conversation:
If you're posting pics that's Ok too, just make sure a) they don't include anything that could give away your specific location b) to make sure a) doesn't happen, either turn off the location services on your phone camera, or specifically turn it off for the camera (e.g. iPhone allows you to have the GPS on which you would need for maps, but specifically turn it off for certain apps/functions like the camera). For pics, if you're not sure, strip the meta data before posting it, in Windows it's as easy as right clicking the file, selecting properties, selecting details, click the "Remove Properties and Personal Information", then choose the "Create a copy with all possible properties removed". Takes a few seconds and ensures there's nothing identifiable in the picture.
If you have the option, use a location other than where you grow to post, just an extra precaution but not high on the list of potential bust threats
If you don't have the option, use a proxy server, that will somewhat hide your address (not really but it adds that extra deterrent, they'd have to dig deeper and obtain more data from the proxy site). Yes, this could slow down your connection slightly, sometimes cause issues with apps, but for the most part proxies are invisible/transparent. Your own ISP may have a proxy service, they may not advertise it but if you ask them a lot of them have them available. This isn't a huge deal as most people don't have fixed IP addresses for their Internet connections, with dynamic IP's they'd have to get your ISP's data (effort, time, deterrent) and search through that to find when and where you posted anything, then correlate it to the destination post, again it's just another deterrent option.
I use all of the above as it's just second nature to me and whether what I'm doing is illegal or not, I don't want anyone snooping around my personal business. For most, the first few points will be more than sufficient.
I posted something recently about this in the support forum and the one good thing is that RIU doesn't log IP addresses. That's a good thing because as well intentioned as they may be, not having the information stored is the first line of defence, storing = potential hack = bad...
