TOR is useless for privacy, not only does it mean that you can be monitored on your own network still but it also means that half the internet can watch your traffic too. TOR includes no encryption, it exists purely to pump your traffic through a selection of random nodes sprawled across the internet so it's harder to see where you are.
I'd likely choose an SSH tunnel, as has already been suggested. Either set one up on your home machine or find a server somewhere you can use.
Directly for the Tor Project website:
To create a private network pathway with Tor, the user's software or client incrementally builds a circuit of encrypted connections through relays on the network. The circuit is extended one hop at a time, and each relay along the way knows only which relay gave it data and which relay it is giving data to. No individual relay ever knows the complete path that a data packet has taken. The client negotiates a separate set of encryption keys for each hop along the circuit to ensure that each hop can't trace these connections as they pass through.
The packets ARE encrypted and the main vulnerability is in the end node. I personally have used a portable version of Tor along with Privoxy and Portable Firefox to surf to my hearts content at work. Yes, they will see that traffic is coming from your PC, but they won't know what or where it goes.
Noob question about securing IM traffic/Firefox at work.
in Security
Posted
Directly for the Tor Project website:
To create a private network pathway with Tor, the user's software or client incrementally builds a circuit of encrypted connections through relays on the network. The circuit is extended one hop at a time, and each relay along the way knows only which relay gave it data and which relay it is giving data to. No individual relay ever knows the complete path that a data packet has taken. The client negotiates a separate set of encryption keys for each hop along the circuit to ensure that each hop can't trace these connections as they pass through.
The packets ARE encrypted and the main vulnerability is in the end node. I personally have used a portable version of Tor along with Privoxy and Portable Firefox to surf to my hearts content at work. Yes, they will see that traffic is coming from your PC, but they won't know what or where it goes.