Internet Security

[Dubas]

I have a slight problem. I just moved into my dorm and my internet is run through the school. I like to download the occasional music file and such, but the school has slapped this agreement(if u can call it that) infront of me and if i don't sign it i get no internet. Here is a link to the aggreement.

http://www.saultcollege.ca/depts/ITS/ResAcceptableUsePolicy.htm

My question is, is there anyway to hide what i am downloading so that they only know that i am using bandwidth or is there anyone else that was slapped with one of these agreements that has any advice/experiances for me?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

[Nick]

Check out: http://freehaven.net/tor/

From their documentation:
"The simple version: Tor provides a distributed network of servers ("onion routers"). Users bounce their TCP streams (web traffic, FTP, SSH, etc.) around the routers. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the onion routers themselves to track the source of the stream.

The complex version: Onion Routing is a connection-oriented anonymizing communication service. Users choose a source-routed path through a set of nodes, and negotiate a "virtual circuit" through the network, in which each node knows its predecessor and successor, but no others. Traffic flowing down the circuit is unwrapped by a symmetric key at each node, which reveals the downstream node."

A friend of mine uses it and says the network response is pretty good, won't slow you to a crawl. Obviously the extra routing hops and decryption will add some time though. I know this was covered on Slashdot also, you might check some of the responses to that thread for other people's opinions also.

[Rich]

After reading the acceptable use policy, it looks like to me, they are just trying to cover their rears in terms of lawsuits. I actually doubt they will look too heavily, but you never know. Besides, it could be worse. Look what Florida (http://www.nwc.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=1503f1) is doing.