Tor – the onion router

Anonymity is a right.

With this entry I am going to talk about a way to protect your true ip address from being logged when you surf the web.

I will discuss a program/service called tor, or “the Onion router.” Tor is a systems that will hide your IP location data as it travels along the internet from prying eyes. It can also be used to send data in a general encrypted form from you to another. When you go to websites your IP address is protected because the site does not know were you truly came from.

More and more companies and governments are using your IP address to track you and your behavior for their own personal use, good and evil. With tor your IP address is cloaked and in doing so much of your surfing habits are protected as well. The service was originally created to allow activists in repressive countries to be able to communicate information or discussions that the government would not want to be known, and not be worried that they would be found out, in some countries their lives would depend on them being anonymous.

The service is quite easy to set up and the more people that use it the better it gets. The current service installs all you need in one directory and runs from that directory only. Here is a little background of tor and how it works. The “onion” part is the fact that it uses different software routers set up by people to send each packet along. Each time it sends data it sends it encrypted and in a different direction using different routers. This is a strength but also creates a weakness, because at times can be slow. With tor as more people use the system the security increases for everyone because there are more routers which allows more random packet directions. First off you may be saying to yourself, how do I know that the routers are not tracking my data? Even if there may be some people/governments that have hacked the routers and are logging the packets that travel along their routers at that one time, its the random nature that will protect you, each time it will be different path that is used.

Here is a simple three step visual description from the tor web site.

To set up tor go to https://www.torproject.org/ and down load the “Tor browser Bundle” for your OS, Linux, Windows, OSX or smart-phones. Install it the start the router program, after a few moments it will open up a browser and let you know your are now browsing the web with your IP hidden for the sites you connect to. If you are worried about installing the software on your system there are two new options called “Tails”, that allow you to create a Live USB or Live DVD so no software is loaded on your machine. You just boot from the USB or DVD and run tor from the independent original operation system. Reboot and the live systems is gone without a trace. This is nice if you are at temp locations/machines and want to have some protection but leave no trace. I recommend you go to the tor web site and brows the “About Tor” section if you still have more questions.

Thanks and safe surfing.

Note if the images are not being displayed – here is the links to them

https://www.torproject.org/images/htw1.png

https://www.torproject.org/images/htw2.png

https://www.torproject.org/images/htw3.png