Browse Internet Anonymously with Tor
By Madhur Kapoor on Aug 23, 2008 in Tutorials, Windows
When you browse the web, you are vulnerable to web attacks, Websites can track your activities, know your IP address, geographical details, find out all about your online activities and lots more. So sometimes, it is better to surf the web in anonymity. Tor is a software that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.
Tor protects your anonymity as you surf and use the Internet. Tor helps to reduce the risks of both simple and sophisticated traffic analysis by distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination. Using it you can even use the messengers and other things anonymously. Download and install Tor, the tor bundle includes Vidalia and Privoxy. Vidalia is a cross-platform controller GUI for the Tor software, built using the Qt framework. Using Vidalia, you can start and stop the Tor software, view its status at a glance, and monitor bandwidth usage. Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data, managing HTTP cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk.
To use it you will still have to make a few configurations. If you are using Firefox, you can do so in the easy way by using the TorButton extension. You can easily enable or disable Tor by using it. If you want to do it manually on the browsers such as IE, Opera and Firefox, you have to configure it buy Going to Connection Settings and configuring proxies. In the proxy settings for HTTP, SSL, FTP, Gopher proxy enter the address as “localhost” and port number as “8118”. In the SOCKS proxy, enter the address as “localhost” and port number as “9050”. If you want to configure it with messengers, just change there proxy settings to the above mentioned address.
After this, just enable Tor by the Onion taskbar icon and right click on it and select ‘start’. The icon will turn green indicating it is on. Now all your surfing will be anonymous.
I have used many such softwares and proxies… and finally my opine is that they suck when the proxy servers get loaded and speed becomes horrible. Best option is to use some anonymizers to hide our identity. This way is possible only for browser based activities and not for messengers and all. Using anonymizers will surely protect your identity….
Pavan Kumar | Aug 24, 2008 | Reply
I have also tried many softwares to surf anonymously. I finally found one that works great. Covert Surfer lets you surf anonymously by downloading the software onto a thumdrive. I can use my thumbdrive anywhere - I keep it with me all the time. I am completely anonymous.
BG0828 | Aug 25, 2008 | Reply
Try covert surfer - it works awesome.
BG0828 | Aug 25, 2008 | Reply
My notebook were infected by virus last time I used free proxy couple months ago.
Jacklin | Aug 27, 2008 | Reply
Madhur,
Very good post. Surprised to know about this..
I will try this…
Nihar | Sep 5, 2008 | Reply
If you post on Craigslist, you should use Krinkle. You can find it at www.krinklecom.com. It changes IP addresses and cleans cookies.
BG0828 | Oct 28, 2008 | Reply