Tag: Tor

What is Tor and Why Use It?

What is Tor and Why Use It?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Since I’ve chosen The Tor Project as my internship community some close friends got curious about Tor. Some of them heard of it during ‘deep web’ conversations and others had even used it once or another. However many of them had doubts and misconceptions about the Tor Browser. I must add that this post represents my opinion and mine only.

  • So what is Tor?

Tor is a browser as many others that we can use to surf the web (Safari, Chrome, Firefox). However, Tor’s main mission is to provide online freedom, privacy and censorship circumvention to everyone, free of charge. Breaking it down, Tor protects your data online while surfing the web.

  • Why someone would like to have a browser like that?

Sometimes when living in a free country, where we have no consequences for giving our opinion or even accessing certain websites, we tend to take freedom for granted. When we aren’t threatened by our sexuality, gender, race, life choices, social status, is easy to forget how many people are frightened daily. When an opinion online can be the cause for persecution and hate, consequences that can go as bad as death. This is the reality of many people using Tor browser.

Along the years that I’ve been into college and my early professional life I’ve read and heard people talking about Tor in different ways. But mostly referring to it when talking about the ‘deep web’. Breaking news: there’s no such thing as ‘deep web’. It’s all the same, all the content online belong to the web. The difference is that some pages are indexed and reachable through search motors like Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on. And the other side is only reachable through specific components, as Tor.

The things that one may find while looking for the non-indexed vary. But mostly it will be journalistic pages, activist groups, alternative opinions. The non-indexed pages aren’t all made of cybercrimes and cybercriminals. It’s vastly used by people that otherwise could suffer harsh consequences for exposing their thoughts, gathering for a protest or even discussing a certain topic.

Journalists are known to use private means to get their tips and gather the information that otherwise would not be gathered. It’s an important maintainer of human rights.

If none of the situations above apply, you can still use Tor to stop google and other websites and extension to spying on your online activity. Do you know when you make a search and then for months you see ads about it? This is Google storing your search history, accessing your information, selling it to marketing companies and inducing you to buy things. All the online data of many users is stored and used for this daily, generating millions to these companies.

  • How Tor works then?

Working with many access points and constantly changing the user network. Tor isn’t a VPN, isn’t a centralized point of access that can be easily tracked. It encapsulates your data and transports it safely across the Tor Network providing security and safeguarding your privacy. A website will not be able to keep your information as it would if using another browser. With powerful tools as First-Party Isolation, bridges to bypass censorship and bans, three layers of encryption, you get back the control over the internet and what you share online.

As Tor says: Sharing should be a choice. Privacy isn’t supposed to be a privilege.

I recommend people to follow Tor’s social media and read the blog. There you will find much more information. It’s important to normalize privacy among users and get the word out that Tor is here to help minorities and provide freedom.

You can also download Tor and try for yourself at The Tor Project website.

It is available for OS X, Android, Linux, and Windows.

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Cybersecurity & Anonymity: What They Have To Do With You?

Cybersecurity & Anonymity: What They Have To Do With You?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Sometimes being a Tech worker I tend to do and know many things, that I consider very normal and obvious, but many people around don’t. Our parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties and more may not understand simple security routines and the need for anonymity.

I didn’t realize that not only older generations underestimate the power of online info, but also newer generations. Sharing my thoughts with a friend around my age we got into a point where she was skeptical about the need to encrypt e-mails, use a safe search motor, use an anonymous browser and so on. This friend is quite techy herself, gaming, using 3D dev tools, however, she didn’t see the need for such things.

What I’ve been hearing most from people when talking about cybersecurity and anonymity is: “I have nothing to hide”. This is especially true when speaking about apps and software that track location, collect basic info, or ask for certain weird permissions before being installed. Also, talking about Google and how it makes a lot of profit from selling personalized adds based on personal e-mails and browser. Many of them tend to brush it off.

So why should we be concerned about this? Do we really have nothing to hide?

Recently The New York Times published an article about the tracking of American cellphones and its locations. For many users that was the first time that they really got face to face with the modern surveillance problem. A lot of people were shocked, but some already had an idea of how our data is being commercialized.

The data collected was sold to the journalists as “anonymous” data usually used to marketing and advertisement. A few days was all that it took for them to cross the dots and identify some of the people on the map. Exposing people’s daily life, legal and illegal activities, friends, habits and much more.

This is just a sample, imagine the places where women have no right to be at certain places at a certain hour? Or journalists fighting against barbaric regimes? Or even LGBTQIA+ people in countries that aren’t accommodative of them?

We take many things for granted due to being in a free country, where our rights are preserved. But have you stopped to think: what if the situation takes a twist?

That’s why we should support projects that allow us to be anonymous if we wish to do so. I’m not saying that you should frantically change Chrome for TorBrowser, and Google for DuckDuck Go. However, it’s important to understand that these tools have a good reason for existing and maybe, just maybe, we should think better about all those apps asking for location, info, pictures, friends and phone numbers.

How much is it worth to have privileges with certain apps integrated services against having the risk of having your browser historic, e-mails, location and etc. sold to someone?

There’s a need to raise this topic and ask questions, to promote awareness among people. A lot of users are feeding Big Databases every day, offering metadata all the time, and they don’t even know.

Do you still think that cybersecurity and anonymity have nothing to do with you?

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Why did I choose The Tor Project?

Why did I choose The Tor Project?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When deciding which FOSS communities I would enroll I came across some very well known communities like Mozilla, Wikimedia, The Tor Project, Debian, and the list goes on. All of them with amazing opportunities. I took my time getting to know them as much as I could and also seeing which projects would keep me interested. When I finally told some of my friends that I had been selected by The Tor project some of them asked me why I had chosen Tor.

First of all I selected Tor based on their values and what they mean to a lot of people around the world. People that otherwise would not be able to access the internet or do it freely. I wasn’t an expect in security and that’s the best part, nobody there judged me for this. After all I could feel safe and alright in an community like Wikmedia being a tech writer. However, getting within Tor is a new experience, something that is pushing me out of my comfort zone. And it’s all good and knowledge.

The people I met there so far are nice and understanding. They provided me material and links to know more about privacy issues and how Tor has been helping minorities and people that otherwise could have problems for advocating for their right, being non binary, assuming their sexuality and much more.

We don’t really think about how deep our lives are exposed out there, how corporations have been making billions on our information and metadata. We don’t think about all the people out there that were defending a cause and got arrested after posting something on internet.

Choosing Tor opened my eyes to something big that has been occurring right under our noses, but we just don’t care. It is never taken seriously until it’s someone that you know that got arrested for nothing, locked up because of a retroactive “crime”. All of this has been happening daily and it is possible because of our data out there.

The Tor Project is my way to learn more about the privacy issues that we have and also to work for this community in order to help more people and bring awareness to others that don’t know about the topic. Above all I have this deep feeling that my values are in sync with Tor’s mission and that’s the most important. We have to work for something that we believe, so we can work with passion.

I’ve been deeply in love with the idea of helping people to protect themselves and helping to maintain a free internet where repressed people can be themselves!

Copy? Over.