Tor (The Onion Router): Difference between revisions
I am reorganising the Technology page, all subcategories will now be found on a single "Technology" page, I think its easier to access |
|||
| Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
[[Category: | [[Category:Technology] | ||
Revision as of 13:42, 1 April 2013
Tor is a free open source project providing people with a proxy to you make your computer IP anonymous when surfing the Internet.
Normal proxies often use a single-step connection, even though they hide your computer IP from websites you visit, your privacy could still be compromised by the owner of that single proxy or by a hostile party monitoring the the proxy server. The tor netork uses a so-called onion layer routing, instead of being routed through a single proxy the data will be sent through an encrypted chain of proxies, with a minimum of three servers located in different countries involved. If a tor server administrator has followed the instructions, it will have been set not to keep logs making it impossible to compromise people's security even if the server is seized, the chain of proxies used also keeps changing every few minutes and there is no way for them to know who the end user is, for a major spy agency to be able to spy on the tor network, they would have to control all of the servers, having just a couple of them would not be enough. The tor network is known to be slow and not recommended to download files, the speed it provides is normally enough to anonymously browse websites that are not too heavy on photos or videos.
The end user runs a program called a tor client on his computer. Using an extra filtering program (like Privoxy) between the tor client and the Internet browser on the local computer is recommended due to the risk of the application revealing user information. Any tor user with sufficient bandwidth can also choose to run a proxy himself, letting other tor users route traffic through his computer, but one has to be very careful about being an end node, the one which IP is visible on the Internet, as of December 2012 there has never been a single tor user ever tracked down and taken to court for any controversial activity he might have carried out using tor, but the police has a couple of times arrested tor node operators making them responsible for what other users post through their IPs.
The tor technology is attractive to boylovers because of the anonymity offered by the proxy network, the tor network also hosts hidden sites that can not be taken offline because it is not possible to work out which server is hosting them, however these sites, with the extension .onion, are only accessible if you run tor software in your computer.
Tor and live CD
Even when you use tor it could still be possible for someone to steal your computer hard drive and look at the contents, websites you have visited using tor proxy can be found out in the Internet browser cache. Using a live CD to browse the Internet will avoid leaving tracks in your hard drive, after you have finished using a live CD all of the data held in volatile RAM memory will be gone and recovery will not be possible, A live CD (i.e. Tails) with tor is one of the most powerful anonymity tools that exist.
External links
[[Category:Technology]
