TOR anonymizer - good thing or not?

[ChiefGeek]

Do you consider TOR anonymizer network to be a good thing, or not?

Obviously, please elaborate on your stance :-)

[vector]

sure. It can be useful for encrypting your traffic on public wifi, also can be useful for circumventing restricted access to certain websites for people in other countries that may not otherwise have access to that information or those websites.

[Sparda]

sure. It can be useful for encrypting your traffic on public wifi, also can be useful for circumventing restricted access to certain websites for people in other countries that may not otherwise have access to that information or those websites.

It's good if you want to do some thing that is technically illegal but most people would consider a necessary evil. Posting to wikileaks for example.

[digip]

TOR used to be something that people used for surfing from wireless cafe's and free hotspots to secure their traffic, but its also something a lot of people block these days, as exit nodes can be monitored and even manipulated in some respect. TOR is not 100% secure or going to keep prying eyes from seeing what you are doing, but for the most part, it helps in getting to sites that might otherwise be blocked by country IP address blocks or such. I have used it in the past for that very reason, to reach sites that blocked US IP addresses. Canadians can do the same to reach US sites, so it has some usefullness, but I would't use it with respect to privacy or security. Just as a means to proxify a connection, not secure my traffic.

[Blue Dragon]

Canadians can do the same to reach US sites, so it has some usefullness, but I would't use it with respect to privacy or security. Just as a means to proxify a connection, not secure my traffic.

However a regular free http proxy from elite-proxy is a lot better for this, I think. With TOR you're routing your traffic through dozens of nodes which causes transfer rates of 10kb/s or less from what I expirienced while trying it. In todays Web 2.0 that's simply not enough for anything on the web. No Video, no Audio, no Pictures (unless you want to wait 2 hours for a few pics to load).

So well, the idea behind TOR is good I think and there're certainly some times where it's actually useful. However most of the time it's rather useless because it's just not fast enough to get anything done.

[L337G33K]

I totally agree with blue dragon.TOR is extremely slow ..sometimes it just takes forever to load web pages.TOR will only be good if you are just routing text rather than media.When I heard of TOR of it for the first time,I thought I was gonna be invincible and totally private but I realized I was wrong. :(

[IOSys]

Anyone remember that Swedish guy who set up a few TOR exit-nodes and sniffed them,

collecting e-mails, logons etc etc from embassies,NGO's and the Office of the Dalai Lama ?

[Joerg]

@IOSys: I did, and I tested it myself and successfully sniffed some credentials.

[antirem]

Its ok if you need it right away but it can be monitored and I wouldnt want to use any financial related passwords on it.

[USBHacker]

TOR used to be something that people used for surfing from wireless cafe's and free hotspots to secure their traffic, but its also something a lot of people block these days, as exit nodes can be monitored and even manipulated in some respect. TOR is not 100% secure or going to keep prying eyes from seeing what you are doing, but for the most part, it helps in getting to sites that might otherwise be blocked by country IP address blocks or such. I have used it in the past for that very reason, to reach sites that blocked US IP addresses. Canadians can do the same to reach US sites, so it has some usefullness, but I would't use it with respect to privacy or security. Just as a means to proxify a connection, not secure my traffic.

Then what would you recommend?

I wish to make myself completely anonymous (untraceable) online.

This includes IM (WLM), IRC & HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

Please recommend something,

Thanks in advance,

USBHacker

PS: What I've been recommended is Steganos, however I would prefer if there was a free alternative.

[Sparda]

Then what would you recommend?

I wish to make myself completely anonymous (untraceable) online.

This includes IM (WLM), IRC & HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

Please recommend something,

Thanks in advance,

USBHacker

PS: What I've been recommended is Steganos, however I would prefer if there was a free alternative.

I recommend you unplug your computer

[ax0n]

Sparda nailed it.

Any time you use IRC or IM, anything you have to sign into, you're handing over something that can probably be tied to you directly. The fact that you even mentioned "anonymous" and "untraceable" while mentioning services where you have to use a name (and will likely use one you've used in the past) means that you don't really understand the concepts of being anonymous and untraceable.

[deleted]

If you want to be untraceable, buy a boat, buy 10 years worth of food and live at sea.

EDIT: Stay away from Somalia - thanks ax0n

[ax0n]

If you want to be taken captive by Somali pirates, buy a boat, buy 10 years worth of food and live at sea.

Fixed that for ya.

[ChiefGeek]

many thanx for the great reactions :-)

not gonna tinker with it at all... I rather just not have to hide anything. <ducks behind desk>

[lopez1364]

Tor are being tracked by a lot of business networks. Sure you could it else where but it takes away a lot of the functions from websites but why use it if you can't use it on business networks.

[ls]

I've used tor in the passed but it was to slow to be useful,

now i use jondo (https://www.jondos.de/en/jondonym) it's faster, free and it gives pretty good anonymity