Is anyone using Tor

[jcw00]

Is anyone using Tor, how much does it slow your connection down?
- See news item: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...rgeted-ad-deal
- And the Tor website http://www.torproject.org/

[Ignatius]

Originally Posted by jcw00

Is anyone using Tor, how much does it slow your connection down?
- See news item: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...rgeted-ad-deal
- And the Tor website http://www.torproject.org/

Tor is an option for preserving anonymity

Just be aware that, unless you're using encrypted traffic, your location, and any unencrypted details (e.g. emails, web traffic) can potentially be found out by the operator of the final node in the chain (called the Exit node).

It's not going to compromise your web banking (which uses SSL) but may compromise access to any sites which don't display the padlock in the browser.

Details can be found here:

http://www.wired.com/politics/securi...urrentPage=all

http://blog.ironkey.com/?p=22

[dev]

last time i used it it was pointlessly slow but it all depends on what route you take so between requests you can see largely differing speeds.

using tor is less safe than "directly" connecting to sites due to the unknown path you take. if you're going to use tor i'd only send SSL/TLS encrypted traffic through it, or traffic i didn't care about. using SSL/TLS to encrypt the traffic isn't 100% secure either but is definately the safest way of using tor

[checker]

Originally Posted by jcw00

Is anyone using Tor, how much does it slow your connection down?
- See news item: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...rgeted-ad-deal
- And the Tor website http://www.torproject.org/

Downloaded, installed and uninstalled it yesterday. Waste of time, very slow and the speedtest test site thinks I'm located on the west coast USA.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Originally Posted by checker

the speedtest test site thinks I'm located on the west coast USA.

Surely that was the idea, to confuse who and what you actually are?

[none]

Originally Posted by jcw00

Is anyone using Tor, how much does it slow your connection down?
- See news item: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...rgeted-ad-deal
- And the Tor website http://www.torproject.org/

Yeah TOR user here, and yes it can be slow at times, painfully slow. But I'd rather put up with slower browsing speeds than have my privacy raped.

In any case its not forever. If VM's plans to sell your browsing history come to fruition, I like many many others will switch ISP's. There are some that have been quite vocal about having NOTHING to do with Phorm

Aquiss - http://forums.aquiss.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3457

Zen Internet - http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/thread/29764.aspx

[checker]

Originally Posted by Rob

Surely that was the idea, to confuse who and what you actually are?

Point taken but I fell asleep waiting for scan.co.uk to load. If VM persist with Phorm then I will think about it again.

[melevittfl]

TOR is probably overkill if all you want to do is hide your traffic from Phorm/VM.

You can use a service like anonymizer.com to hide your traffic. It doesn't have quite the same level of security as TOR. For example, a government could demand that Anonymizer.com turn over logs to identify you, whereas TOR would protect against that.

But for stopping VM from tracking your website usage, it would be sufficient.

Of course, we shouldn't have to pay to hide our surfing from our own ISP.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by melevittfl

TOR is probably overkill if all you want to do is hide your traffic from Phorm/VM.

You can use a service like anonymizer.com to hide your traffic. It doesn't have quite the same level of security as TOR. For example, a government could demand that Anonymizer.com turn over logs to identify you, whereas TOR would protect against that.

But for stopping VM from tracking your website usage, it would be sufficient.

Of course, we shouldn't have to pay to hide our surfing from our own ISP.

Last time I checked, Anonymizer.com was just a proxy system. Unless that has changed, Virgin/Phorm can still intercept your traffic before it leaves their network (hence before it gets to anonymiser's proxies) and log it.

Changing proxy will not stop this.

Tor will, because it intercepts (and redirects via it's own P2P type network) your communications before they leave your computer. But, you run the risk of some of the less than legal types who run Tor (I am not casting apersions on all Tor users, I know some people use it for legit reasons, but the fact it hides you will attract hackers) getting access to your data.

Edit: Just checked: Anonymizer.com is an anonymous proxy service, so, therefore, will not protect you from this.

[dev]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Last time I checked, Anonymizer.com was just a proxy system. Unless that has changed, Virgin/Phorm can still intercept your traffic before it leaves their network (hence before it gets to anonymiser's proxies) and log it.

Changing proxy will not stop this.

Tor will, because it intercepts (and redirects via it's own P2P type network) your communications before they leave your computer. But, you run the risk of some of the less than legal types who run Tor (I am not casting apersions on all Tor users, I know some people use it for legit reasons, but the fact it hides you will attract hackers) getting access to your data.

Edit: Just checked: Anonymizer.com is an anonymous proxy service, so, therefore, will not protect you from this.

assuming VM/Phorm (if plans go ahead and how its done), log traffic on outgoing port 80, then if anonymizer doesnt use port 80 (which is likely to be the case) then it wont be logged and will be fine. tbh i'd use things like anonymizer over tor any day, not only for the speed but for the "safety"

[none]

opps, please del - double post

[melevittfl]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Last time I checked, Anonymizer.com was just a proxy system. Unless that has changed, Virgin/Phorm can still intercept your traffic before it leaves their network (hence before it gets to anonymiser's proxies) and log it.

It is a proxy, but all of the traffic between your machine and the anonymizer.com proxy servers are encrypted. Thus, Virgin/Phorm can see that your sending encrypted packets to Anonymizer.com, but they won't be able to see what sites you're actually visiting.