Tor (The Onion Router)

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Revision as of 16:09, 3 December 2012 by Eskimo (talk | contribs) (tor explanation expanded)

Tor is a proxy free open source project that helps you make your computer IP anonymous when you surf 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 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, 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.

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