We’ve written before about anonymity and privacy on Tor.
Tor is short for
The Onion Router, an internet service that intercepts the network traffic from one or more apps on your computer, usually your web browser, and shuffles it through a number of randomly-chosen computers before passing it on to its destination.
This disguises your location, and makes it harder for servers to pick you out on repeat visits, or to tie together separate visits to different sites, thus making tracking and surveillance more difficult.
The computers in the Tor network, known as
nodes, are run by thousands of volunteers around the world, and the theory is that as long as most of them are honest, your anonymity in and through the network will be maintained.
Of course, not all Tor nodes are playing by the rules of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
Some are run by crooks; others are run by intelligence services; and others are run by well-meaning individuals whose servers have been hacked by unknown third parties…
…so that numerous tricks and traps have emerged that can make the Tor network a lot less anonymous than you might at first think.
That might not matter so much if all you’re doing is using it to research online prices without being tracked, but it could matter a great deal if you’re a journalist trying to keep in touch with the rest of the world in the middle of an armed insurrection.
