See other Science/Tech Articles
Title: Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
Source:
TOR
URL Source: http://tor.eff.org/
Published: Aug 18, 2005
Author: TOR
Post Date: 2005-08-18 18:59:54 by Flintlock
Keywords: communication, anonymous, Internet
Views: 137
Comments: 5
Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features. Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the onion routers themselves to figure out who and where you are. Tor's technology aims to provide Internet users with protection against "traffic analysis," a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Traffic analysis is used every day by companies, governments, and individuals that want to keep track of where people and organizations go and what they do on the Internet. Instead of looking at the content of your communications, traffic analysis tracks where your data goes and when, as well as how much is sent. For example, online advertising companies like Fastclick and Doubleclick use traffic analysis to record what web pages you've visited, and can build a profile of your interests from that. A pharmaceutical company could use traffic analysis to monitor when the research wing of a competitor visits its website, and track what pages or products that interest the competitor. IBM hosts a searchable patent index, and it could keep a list of every query your company makes. A stalker could use traffic analysis to learn whether you're in a certain Internet cafe. Tor aims to make traffic analysis more difficult by preventing eavesdroppers from finding out where your communications are going online, and by letting you decide whether to identify yourself when you communicate. Tor's security is improved as its user base grows and as more people volunteer to run servers. Please consider installing it and then helping out. Part of the goal of the Tor project is to deploy a public testbed for experimenting with design trade-offs, to teach us how best to provide privacy online. We welcome research into the security of Tor and related anonymity systems, and want to hear about any vulnerabilities you find. Tor is an important piece of building more safety, privacy, and anonymity online, but it is not a complete solution. And remember that this is development code—it's not a good idea to rely on the current Tor network if you really need strong anonymity. Poster Comment: Anybody have any ideas about this stuff?
Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Flintlock (#0)
No. But I'll damn sure check it out. Thank you.
I use it from
time to time. The throughput is fine, but the latency can be annoying at times.
Also, like so many open source tools, it always seems to be a dialog box away
from convenient use. The version I have(which I believe is the most recent
one) requires that you first start Privoxy(a proxy server) to catch and direct
traffic. Privoxy puts up a window that you can then close, leaving a tray icon.
Then you start Tor, and it gives you a DOS window, which you must NOT close.
Then, if everything is working right, it will say "Tor has successfully opened a
circuit -- looks like it's working!!" You may need to alter your browser's
timeout settings to deal with the latency, but once a page is loading it loads
at the same apparent rate as without Tor. Interestingly, though I know
Slashdot and some other sites won't let you post if you're using Tor, there are
some sites(well, one 
#2. To: Flintlock (#0)
any ideas about this stuff?
Even though I rarely take measures to protect my identity, I like the idea of better anonymity, so I like Tor.
#3. To: Rabble Rouser (#2)
What a coincidence! I like Tor as well! ...so I like Tor.
 | Gold and silver are real money, paper is but a promise. |
#4. To: Elliott Jackalope (#3)
Looks like Tor could use a little more fiber in his diet.
"If you're not cynical, then you're not paying attention."
#5. To: all (#0)
I like it. Not sure that I would recommend it for those who use dial-up (like me). As mentioned above, the latency is a small annoyance which is magnified by the slow dial-up speeds because folks are too cheap to fork over the cash for broadband (like me). Though I am at the point where my wife needs to be on the net as much as I do for her work and tossing in a router to split the dial-up is well.... well.... there are no proper words to describe it. None that I can share on a public forum at any rate. None that I wouldn't have to confess for later and ask forgiveness for. If you are on broadband, I wouldn't surf without something like this.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest