Just a few months ago Edward Snowden a Systems Administrator working for the National Security Agency (NSA) leaked classified documents concerning the organisations’ spying activities. These classified documents revealed certain controversial techniques that the NSA was using to spy on the online activities of the american people as well as people from other countries. This shocking revelation consequently resulted in public outrage and has since caused a lot of controversy. If you would like to know how you can protect your privacy online then this post will show you how you can do that.
Today there are numerous software programs and Internet proxy servers and that offer anonymous web browsing capabilities, but the fact is that if the government wants confidential user data from these providers then the owners are bound by law to give out this sensitive information which is inadvertently saved on their servers. Now that’s something to be worried about.
TOR (the onion router) is a program that provides anonymity online but works a bit differently. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network which consists of thousands of relays. This complex process of rerouting internet traffic hides the users IP address and location making it difficult for anyone trying to monitor their activities online.
The Tor Browser Bundle is a portable and customized version of the popular web browser Morzilla Firefox that comes pre-configured with necessary settings to help users remain anonymous online. So if you’d like to run TOR on your computer here’s how to do it.
1. Open your internet browser and go to – https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
2. Click on the orange “Download Tor Browser Bundle” button.
3. Next choose your language and Operating System (OS) and wait for the file to download.
4. Once the program has finished downloading, fire it up and click on the Extract button. But before you click on the Extract button you will either need to copy or remember the “Extract to:” location.
5. Next go to the Extract to: location and launch the Start Tor Browser.exe file.
6. The program will start with a small window popping up and connecting to the Tor network. Once the connection is successful it will automatically open Tor’s customized Firefox browser and you can surf the Internet anonymously.
Remember not to provide any personal information whatsoever while using the Tor browser. Information like email usernames and passwords can be traced to your account and could compromise your anonymity.
~Aaron
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for your detailed reply.
I’m really surprised that people are so concerned about a govenment agency’s network that ‘can’ track your activities. Just because they ‘can’ and do collect details of many, then scan them routinely needn’t create any concern for most of us. Remember, they are only trying to trap any criminal/terrorist activity going on unnoticed. I see no differnce between a pliice officer asking me where I’m going during the dead of night/ in a lonely place, just to check if I’m.. and my Internet activity Scan. In fact, I prefer the later, as it doesn’t trouble me.
As long as they don’t find anything illegal or I or my activity doesn’t resemble that of a hardcore criminal/terrorist, I don’t see any problem here.
And, nor would I be against businesses collecting information about my interest to target ads to me.
All I’m concerned about are the people follow me with nefarious intentions.
I also suggest governement agencies to warn the persons if they find any of those scanned are infected with malware or malware activities in their tracks – just to gain the goodwill of people.
It is like I used to tell my students about viruses etc. the only way to be 100% sure they don’t track you is to leave the computer turned off.
Apparently turning it off still isnt’ 100% secure any longer.
Great point Rasheen Whidbee. I recently read an article which said that the NSA uses radio waves to snoop on offline computers.
Great point Rasheen. I recently read an article which said that the NSA uses radio waves to snoop on offline computers.