What Happens When You Don’t Use A Reliable VPN

For those of us who think they are anonymous, safe and secure on the internet… think again.

Let the next story be a lesson for us all. The story is that of Eldo Kim, a somewhat intelligent Harvard University student who emailed bomb threats to get out of a final exam.

The most interesting part is how he got busted by police. Eldo Kim was ballsy to send the bomb threats by email, he used an anonymous email service by the name of Guerrilla Mail, and he also used Tor on top of that to hide and secure his identity (at least that’s what he thought).

To most people, this sounds like a legit way to protect and hide your online presence but Eldo Kim made a critical mistake of using the WiFi network on campus at Harvard when making these bomb threats. This was a now easy task to investigate the matter and track down the criminals. All police had to do was check the Harvard WiFi logs to see who was using the Tor network at the time the emails were sent, and then bring in everyone for questioning. It was highly likely that our Kim was the only student using Tor at 8,30 am that morning.

ISP companies can easily tell who is connected to Tor, whether you are at home or using a Harvard WiFi.

Normally, when police want to talk to you, it’s best to keep your mouth shut and ask for your lawyer. Simply say “I have no comment and I wish to see my lawyer”. Police are NOT your friends. Their job is to catch criminals and “would be” criminals and put them away behind bars. This is what the police get paid for. If you talk to police, even if you are innocent, you can still find yourself in a world of trouble and possibly get charged for a crime you didn’t commit. Police use tricks and put pressure on their suspects to make them crack and confess.

This can be from threatening behavior to using full scale physical violence. Once you confess your crime or even mention any details that could link you to the crime, you are now officially a suspect. Our friend Eldo Kim cracked pretty easy and gave full admission to police. if he kept his mouth shut and asked for his lawyer, he may have very well walked a free man within a day or two.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to get busted on the internet doing dumb shit like Eldo Kim did and I don’t recommend anyone following his actions. making a bomb threat is moronic, reckless and dangerous.

Anyone can make mistakes, and Kim was not a dumb guy. He was attending Harvard which is one of the top universities in the world. So if you think this can’t happen to you, think again. 

Could Eldo Kim have done anything better to protect his identity online? Sure! Instead of using the Harvard WiFi, Kim should have gone somewhere with open WiFi, perhaps a library or Starbucks. This would have already made it very hard to find him. If Eldo Kim also used a reliable VPN that does not keep user data logs such as Nord VPN on top of Tor then this may have helped greatly also.

Now police would need to look outside Harvard in order to trace Kim and that would have been much more time consuming and quiet frankly, this would not have been serious enough to spend resources on.  

As mentioned before, I do not condone what Eldo Kim did and do not encourage anyone to copy his actions, but anonymity tools are important for us and must be used in the right manner. These tools such as VPNs and Tor were created so people can have the freedom of speech and have the ability to be free from persecution from draconian laws and governments that want to silence the internet. 

I personally use Nord VPN. NordVPN is based away from the EU and US jurisdictions, they keep no logs of your activity online, they accept cryptocurrencies, and they are one of the best value for money. I got a special deal with Nord VPN at $2.99 per month, that’s cheaper than a cup of coffee.

You can find Nord VPN here: Nord VPN.

Your friend,

Alex