Downloads

When you browse the Web, your life is an open book. Web sites can track your online activities, know what operating system and browser you're running, find out your machine name, uncover the last sites you've visited, examine your history list, delve into your cache, examine your IP address and use that to learn basic information about you such as your geographic location?and there's more as well.

How to protect yourself? Use Tor, which protects you anonymity as you surf and use the Internet. When you use Tor, all your communications, (not just Web surfing, but also instant messaging and other applications) are essence bounced around a giant network of Tor servers called "onion routers," until it's impossible for sites or people to be able to track your activities.

When you download Tor, you get other software that works in concert with it, including Privoxy, a proxy program. All the software is self-configuring, so you won't need to muck around with port settings or the like. Tor runs as a small icon in your system tray. To start Tor, right-click it and choose Start from the menu that appears; to stop it, right-click it and choose Stop. Once it starts, simply use the Internet as you normally would. If you're somewhat paranoid, you can regularly change your Tor "identity," to make it even harder for anyone to track your travels. Tor also includes a nice bandwidth tool that graphs your bandwidth use.