Wednesday 5 February 2014

Get to know #1: TOR Browser

Tor Browser



    Writing this post, after several techno-political magazines around the world dried their tongue out by updating the current status of NSA also known as (US)National Security Agency vs Edward Snowden dispute aloud. Coincidentally, came to know about Onion Router, its functionality and its least exposure among internet users. The name being catchy and funny, went to dig out more, as a result, landed on downloading a browser called TOR (not to be spelled as THOR). Before explaining my personal experience about it, a short interesting as well as responsible behaviour of TOR first and in the mean time you may come to know about the relation between Mr.Snowden and this veggie browser.

Unlike Chrome, IE or Opera:

      Been developed on Mozilla's open source though, but TOR's contribution is so unique for those who have deep concerns about their private space in their internet life.Though we knew about the fact that social websites like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter etc. are US Govt's surveillance friendly which always insists us to be more social and openness under their default settings, so that they will be catching our data into their pockets in a minimal effort. As an unwritten rule, these giants by favoring to its snoopy government wont encourage their users' anonymous operation like covering up their whereabouts and privacy details. That is why TOR functionality is standing rebellious against NSA and this is what TOR Browser is all about. Its rebellious behavior well exhibited by standing against conventional browsers' functionality. Tor, an acronym for "The Onion Router" is a no evil software assures us in its download note of being untraceable of user's physical location or messages when surfing several websites. Cool isn't? 

How it works?

              When visiting say for example visiting facebook using this onion type browser, the data from your side with all your vital information will not hit facebook servers directly instead, it will be carried into several TOR relays a virtual circuit group which will encrypt your data for each successive relay.(These multi-relays are comprised like onion layers, so the name). The choice of path to ToR relay is also randomly selected. Upon successive encryptions or re encryptions will hit the facebook servers and the data journey completes by serving you your facebook home page with no spilled beans. To know more about TOR operations, please visit by clicking here. Though various IT experts blames this concept citing several loopholes in its operations, there is no doubt that the efforts made to protect users sensitive information shall not be left aside or ignored. This saviour of users' data looked very promising to Mr. Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who became celebrity when exposing the aggressive surveillance program conducted by United States of America against all the netizens. Mr.Snowden used this Tor browser for any online communications thereby he was very successful in conveying out his govt. surveillance activity without opening hood. I got a nice experience of being secured internet surfer, when logged into facebook, it frequently tested me whether am an autobot since my location not being exposed by my TOR browser. You can also I believe experience the same.



Please provide your experience or feedback here. Discussions are also welcome.

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