Tor helps Privacy

Tor, (or The Onion Router) is a service which connects people all over the world with one aim: privacy. Tor protects from traffic analysis, basically where you have been. Benn to you Banks website? Feel like buying something off Amazon or Ebay? Your behaviour online is by no means private, you hand over your numerical address, browser details, country, city, versions of which plugins you use, where you came from, just to name a few. You may have seen on sites something to the effect of “Welcome Google user!”, that website knows exactly what you typed to get to it. Tor routes your online activity through different computers, for example mine went through an educational institution in the US and an Internet Service Provider in the Netherlands.

But if you want privacy you have something to hide! Not true. You don’t hand over records of everywhere you go in reality, nor documents, or details of medical conditions etc., their is a genuine use case for privacy in the modern world which is sadly being eroded. I just watched ABC news repeat on Sky News, and it reported of the FBI sending letters out asking for information from librarys, banks and every institution inbetween. It involved no court, no checks and balances, nothing. Tor is also used by the law itself, to conceal government surveillance of illegal activity (for example, child pornography). So not only is Tor needed, but it can extend to everything online, Instant Messaging. Tor limits abuse with a high degree of success and it is cross platform, on Linux, Windows and Mac. Get it here: Tor.eff.org