Protecting Yourself With Tor

Aren't I Already Protected?

Im not talking about viruses in this post. Not even Ubuntu is safe from government surveillance. You are never truly anonymous on the internet without using Tor. Everywhere you go and everything you do is recorded. If you want to hide your internet usage from your ISPs, your government, pretty much anyone you can use Tor to do just that.

What Is This "Tor" And How Does It Work?

Tor is a program that redirects your network traffic. To put it simply, it sends what you search for to several anonymous computers around the world before it reaches your destination. So if someone were to try and backtrace network traffic to see who did what, they would get the IP of a Tor Node(routing computer). This prevents you from getting in trouble for speaking out if you live under an oppressive government and keeps your traffic private so your ISP does not know what you are doing. You can set up your Ubuntu install to route all of your traffic through Tor but in this post I am going to detail how to install the Tor Browser Bundle, which is a customized version of Firefox geared toward privacy.

Does It Do Anything Else?

Yes! With the Tor browser Bundle you can access hidden sites that are not available off the Tor Network. They have the .onion extension and usually have a domain name that appears to be gibberish. These sites contain anything the host wishes to share.

It also can circumvent country censorship. For example if nationwide YouTube is blocked, you would be able to view YouTube. Same with school censorship, so if your school Wi-Fi blocks a website you use it will work no problem with Tor.

How Do I Get It?

To get the Tor Browser Bundle open up Terminal and type,

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:webupd8team/tor-browser

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install tor-browser

The browser will be installed, just go to the Dash and type in Tor Browser and click the onion icon. Now just click connect and it will set itself up. When the browser pops up you are ready to go. I live in the Southeast United States and when I looked up my IP it says I was in Germany, this is how I verify that Tor is working.

Remaining Anonymous on Tor

Tor shuffles your network traffic but it doesn't control what you do on the network. Here are a few key things to avoid while using Tor if you need to stay anonymous. It is not that it is not safe to do these things on Tor, it is just that they will give away your real identity.

• Logging in to things with your real name on the account
• Social media!!!
• Banking
• Buying goods
• Signing up for things
• Blogging with non anonymous account