Protecting Your Online Privacy

Tor helps you become anonymous online.Every time you use the Internet your information is being collected by third parties. In the US, this often means when you visit a website, advertisers are capturing data about what ads you click on and what information you search for to serve you more targeted ads.

In places like China, all traffic going in and out of the country is monitored. Certain website are blocked and the content of your messages (email, forums, IRC) is monitored by a legion of net nannies.

Whether you're worried about advertisers capturing your info, or preventing the government from snooping, Tor is an excellent solution. Tor, "The Onion Router", is free open source software that provides you with anonymity online.

Tor works by distributing the source of your traffic across a variety of exit points, so that your computer cannot be associated with the final destination. Just like the layers of an onion, Tor provides several layers of encryption -- one encrypted layer to each relay along the path that you're relaying traffic through.

As Tor explains on its site:

"The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you — and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several relays that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going."

Tor is an excellent resource for journalists that need to protect their anonymity, those that want to express their opinions under regimes where freedom of speech is in question and anyone concerned about what information is being captured about their Internet use.

Tor is largely run by volunteers who run relays that help anonymize Internet traffic. In addition, there's a team working hard to continually improve Tor, including Jacob Applebaum, its main advocate and Bay Area native.

If you would like to learn more about Tor or download it, visit Tor's website to learn more.

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