This page is anonymous

Today, to host a piece of content on the Internet, you must link your identity to the content on some level. This is most prominent with social networks such as Facebook and Google+, but even to host an anonymous blog on a free service such as WordPress.com or Tumblr is not trivial. Other options, such as Tor hidden services are less than ideal, since they do not provide access to most people.

Amidst all the content hosting providers that want to know at least your email address, and often your credit card number, there is one place where you can still host your content anonymously. That place is the Super Dimension Fortress or SDF. SDF lets you register an anonymous user over ssh (which is accessible via the Tor network) and takes cash over mail in order to validate the user. This page was registered in exactly this way: I created a user called "voidnull" over ssh over Tor, then mailed SDF a single dollar bill with no return address. Whenever I access this account I use Tor, so there is very little chance that my identity will be linked to this account. Below are the exact details of how I did this.

Getting your own account

The first thing you need to do is install a Tor relay on your machine. Look at the Tor documentation for details.

After the installation is complete, you can use ssh over tor, like so: $ ssh -o ProxyCommand="nc -X 4 -x localhost:9050 %h %p" sdf.org . You could create an alias for this command in your .bashrc with alias torssh='ssh -o ProxyCommand="nc -X 4 -x localhost:9050 %h %p"' .

You will need to register an account with SDF. The details can be found here and here. To get started, torssh to new@sdf.org . You will have to answer a few questions. After you are done, you will have an account that is not linked to you in any way. The catch is that SDF will not let you host content on the web until your account is validated. This means, sending them a $1 bill in the mail. Look at the bottom of the donation page for the address. Once you send your donation, wait 1-2 weeks. Your account will eventually be approved and you can start hosting your web content. In the mean time, read the web hosting FAQ.

About SDF

SDF has been around since 1987. It had a long history, starting as a BBS and progressing to become a free UNIX shell provider and a community of hackers. Read more about SDF's history here.

Is this even legal?

Yes, it is legal. This page provides only a basic summary of public knowledge and hosts no malicious content. Disseminating information on the Internet without revealing your identity is your right and SDF provide tools for doing so. As far as I interpret the rules, there is nothing illicit about using Tor to access SDF, or setting up an anonymous account, so long as no other illicit activity takes place.

The Challenge

If you think there is a way that this page could be linked to my identity, I challenge you to send me a postcard to my mailing address with the content that says "I see you voidnull" and a self-addressed postage-paid envelope. I will then send you a $10 bill back as a prize. The first person to do this wins the prize, and the rest become ineligible. I will update this page once the prize has been claimed.

Update: 2013-05-01 18:52:09 UTC

It appears that the voidnull account has been disabled on Hacker News. As Hacker News provides no way of knowing why an account has been disabled, I will post an update here:

As others have pointed out, there are other ways to achieve the same result, such as using BitCoin and WordPress.com. This is one way, but it has the added benefit of promoting some great services and projects.

voidnull.com is not I and I am not voidnull.com. I apologize to Rubén Díaz if he ends up receiving a few cards. I picked the name randomly, and didn't realize it clashed with a .com domain.

Running a whole lot of Tor nodes to catch me would be somewhat problematic, as I also only access resources as voidnull over HTTPS.

Hacker News does not require an email address at signup.

I only access resources as voidnull over Tor, so even if someone from the HN team published access logs, I would be as secure as any other Tor user.

I am not Stephen M Jones or Martin Naskovski.

I did not lick the envelope. The registration was processed before any content was ever filled in here, so unless SDF has a policy of holding onto envelopes, it has probably been destroyed since.

Update: 2013-05-02 15:43:59 UTC

I received the following message from Stephen M Jones yesterday:

From smj@sdf.org Wed May 1 18:10:17 2013 Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 18:10:17 GMT From: "Stephen M. Jones" To: voidnull@sdf.org Subject: bitcoin Hey, don't forget to state that we accept bitcoin for validation in your challenge. Good luck, I hope you get to keep your $10!

Update: 2013-05-02 15:52:19

smj also sent me this email:

From smj@sdf.org Wed May 1 19:21:06 2013 Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 19:21:06 GMT From: "Stephen M. Jones" To: voidnull@sdf.org Subject: I will up the prize to $100 I will personally up the prize to $100.

Update: 2013-05-02 16:04:12 UTC

And another email from SMJ:

Sure, but it looks like someone else also did the same thing. So there are three of us. You are right, we have no way of knowing who you are. I find it interesting people ask about having a cat lick the envelop. We shredded it anyway. I guess the only thing we would of had was a postmark. Anyway, good luck and have fun with this. > Do you mean for the http://voidnull.sdf.org challenge?