What Is TOR? And How Do I Use It? First Steps For Beginners

[Saran999 288]

So you want to surf the web anonymously? Tor's one of, if not the best, way to do it, and best of all it's FREE (and easy to setup and use).

In this tutorial we'll explain in "Layman's Terms", what Tor is.

https://www.torproject.org/

Tor (used to stand for "The Onion Router", but it's no longer considered an abbreviation, so it's just "Tor"), is an anonymity network, used to surf the web (and more) anonymously. Basically, anyone running the Tor software on their computer runs a proxy, and traffic gets passed (encrypted) from one person running Tor to another person running Tor, multiple times through many users, until it get's to the page that you requested. Hence the term "Onion" used to describe it, since it works in "layers". Each person running Tor on their computer is called a "Node".

To the page (and anyone logging requests to that page, such as the website owner for example) they can only see the IP address of the last Node (called the "end node"). Any communication along the way, between you, when you request the website page, and the final destination, is encrypted, and cannot be analyzed. However, the last Node in the chain can log and view traffic through it, if the person running it is unscrupulous, so for that reason it can't be said that Tor is 100% anonymous.

There are a few different ways to use Tor, so we'll explain to you the basic ones. First off, you need to decide which program you'll want to use along side of Tor itself:
 

• Polipo cache's pages and does a few other more technical things that for the purpose of this tutorial I won't explain, so that you don't feel confused or overwhelmed, (if anyone else wants to go into technical details on what Polipo does, comments are welcome) suffice it to say, you don't really need to know that stuff in order to use Tor. Polipo is for that reason, said to be faster while using Tor, and often it is, but not always, and it's also said to be the less secure option of the two as far as your privacy is concerned. It will give you a new IP address when surfing, however it is said to also leak a lot of your real information along the way.

http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~jch/software/polipo/

• The other option is using Privoxy instead of Polipo. Privoxy doesn't cache your web pages, but it's much more secure as far as leaking any of your real information. Since it does no caching, it can be painfully (brutally, ripping out hair) slow most of the time.

http://www.privoxy.org/

So it boils down to do you want speed, or security. Polipo for speed, Privoxy for security. Regardless of your choice, Tor is generally still just too slow to use 100% of your time on the internet, so you'll really only want to use it when wanting to remain private for a short time.

Tor is also much too slow, and for some other reasons, it's highly discouraged to use it for something like Torrent downloading.

You can download Tor from this page

https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en

If interested, I may post other info on the subject and we may dig down a bit more on web privacy and anonymity

[daytrader 203]

Good info,  by in  real terms, one  is  better off to use a  decent vpn  account and NOT a proxy  like  TOR.

This  is  what I  do  anyway..

[Saran999 288]

Off course, depends on what you are doing and how much you care about your privacy.

 

VPN it's better for speed, and will encrypt your connection between you and your provider, providing you with a single exit point at a time, from different countries if you have paid a bonus. As it comes at a cost. More than one in fact.

 

You must trust your VPN provider, as in any case he may be forced, or simply easily comply, with the ones that are interested in what you are doing out there. And you must pay him big bucks to get his service, leaving your credit card information and your identity. Perhaps bucks not so 'big', but some that you may spend elsewhere.

 

From a 10.000 feet perspective you are right, TOR is a sort of Super-Proxy. But if you fly down a bit, you will start to see huge differences

 

With a simple proxy, you will have one connection to a determined website, and you will leave fingerprint in your provider logs that will tell anyone who you are. Even using HTTPS to connect to your proxy, you will have disclosed your proxy IP address, and the game ends there. As then, there are the proxy provider logs. Remember that not even Swiss it's anymore a privacy island, and leave Sweden out of the table as even there things start to get 'smelly'...

 

With TOR, your first request will be to a proxy (always a different one and you may choose how to handle your request) and will be obscured, so your provider doesn't know what you are doing.

When you first touch TOR network, the most that your provider may get is that you are doing http requests, or something else, but not to whom, and not the content of them. Then, your packets will travel across hundred of proxies, (always different and you may choose to change them during an active connection, changing your identity on the fly), each of them with no kept logs, and will always exit from different places, zeroing the possibility to be tracked back by curious companies, and marketing hoarders. You care about session states? Ok, do a job at a time, or a cluster of jobs at a time, and then change the game and start another cluster of jobs. To me this sounds far superior to a simple proxy, as, in any case, all of your traffic will flow trough TOR, exactly as a VPN does.

 

And, add to this superior technology the fact that it's completely free, giving to anyone the possibility to defend his privacy. It's not impossible to track you back, and I will not condone any kind of law breaking actions, but we may for sure affirm that the methods that must be used to track your connection back to you are not in the hands of simple 'privacy breakers' or identity thieves, and will cost so much money (read human effort and time) to perform, that will not be deemed worthwhile.

 

If you seriously do damages, then IT WILL be deemed worthwhile, and you are game.

All depends on you, as always, as if the Internet teach to us something is just this: responsibility. Responsibility that comes with knowledge that you MUST own if you want to freely follow your own interests.

 

We all know about VPN's and its costs, but most don't know how it works and that there are free alternatives. The article says that TOR it's absolutely not usable for torrents and huge downloads. Use a VPN for that.

 

But for all the other services and purposes, IMHO, TOR is far better than a VPN, and again, doesn't cost a dime and doesn't force your to disclose your identity, and credit card info or merchant account, to anyone. It cost only knowledge, that I'm trying to share.

[eatmyshorts 201]

Tor is actually really good on the most part...it was originally designed for "government" sections...