Musing of a chubby Ginger kid.

"If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy."
-- Phillip Zimmerman

So I listen to PaulDotCom on a regular basis and have listened to Twitchy go on and on about Tor a thingus for anonymous web browsing. He goes on and on about how Tor is cooler than sliced bread with and a banana, Jesus used Tor, Tor once got a kitten out of a tree, etc. Little did I know it is way more powerful and way cooler than that. It lets you go through the internet, anonymously, and come out randomly on the other side, in a manner of speaking. It mainly protects you from traffic analysis, protecting you from others finding out where you "go" on the internet. Want to read about Tiananmen Square and you live behind the Great Firewall of China? Maybe you have an embarrassing health condition and want to be able to join an online support group, but the idea of the support guys at work reading you posts kinda makes you queezy. Tor will let you go to those sites anonymously and all anyone watching you traffic will know is that you are using Tor. It defeats websites from tracking their users, prevents people from watching where you are "going online", people can communicate in socially sensitive forums, journalists to communicate in a hostile country, the list goes on and on why it is a great resource for anyone wanting to protect their privacy and anonymity. You can use it to IM, email, surf, use bittorrent, just all kinds of cool things. There are also things like hidden services which sounds super cool and might come in handy at work. I plan on writing a full howto later on Tor with all kinds of pictures for people who are more visually oriented

Resources

Wikipedia Article
Tor Homepage
Privoxy