Privacy is now the main problem of the web. Companies spy on us, collect data (on an anonymous basis) about what we are looking for, what we read and the preferences we give using the various "like" or +1 buttons.
Furthermore, everything that is done on the net can be monitored by the authorities and it is important to know that when you visit a site, you leave an indelible trace of your presence that can, in theory, be traced.
You shouldn't be scared anyway, as long as you are on the internet to read newspapers, blogs and Facebook there is nothing to fear and the fact that advertisements are based on your interests may not be bad (see how not to be tracked by advertising agencies online).
The fact remains that, in some cases, it may be desirable to hide your identity on the internet, protect it and make sure that the connection cannot be located .
The easiest way to do it and also the way used by those who live in countries without freedom is through the Tor project .
This project, unique and without alternatives, allows you to mask your online identity so that the servers to which you connect (i.e. websites) cannot identify you, keeping anonymity on the Internet.
In this way, you can do whatever you want, without risking any consequences, browsing so that it is impossible to be identified .
You may be surprised to know how many people use the " Tor Project " and the project website keeps us showing what kind of people use it and for what purposes and benefits.
Without a doubt, Tor is a tool used by hackers or groups of people who act for illegal activities (for example, those who participate in the attacks by Anonymous), but the project is also exploited for more noble purposes, to overcome the restrictions imposed by the countries or for access unreachable sites in your location.
The site also lists activists, journalists and other users who use the service to spread the news and information they have, without giving identifiable information to servers and other spies.
The Tor service works by directing the computer's web traffic to something called an " onion routing network ", a fancy term to say that all traffic is randomly redirected through multiple nodes ("layers") until it reaches its destination. Practically your computer connects first to another pc (node) then, from this to another and so on until you get to the website.
The server that hosts a site therefore sees incoming traffic but identifies it as coming from the last computer of the path and cannot absolutely trace the origin.
Surfing the internet, the connection passes through other randomly generated paths each time, therefore, in the eyes of the server, the traffic appears to be coming from many different computers.
Although this is evident to the tracing experts, there is nothing they can do to identify the first pc.
It is recent history that the leader of the hacker group called LulzSec has used TOR for all his activities and has been identified and captured just because. once, he entered an IRC chat server without activating the TOR network on his computer.
The use of Tor services is very easy : in fact, just download the Tor Browser package that includes all the necessary applications, that is: a control panel called Vidalia, a modified version of Firefox and an extension for Firefox.
Without making installations, simply unzip the downloaded file into a folder or on a USB stick and start Tor Browser.
For maximum privacy, you need to be careful and disable every browser plugin, including Flash, Java or other components.
You can also use Tor with another browser or use it with other programs that connect to the internet.
From the Vidalia control panel you can change the connection port and configure Tor on the default browser by enabling the proxy with address 127.0.0.1 and with port 8118.
In another article, the guide to surfing with foreign ip with Tor .
In addition to TOR, another article indicates other methods for anonymous surfing on the Internet.
In addition there are programs to create VPN and encrypt the connection to protect it and free proxy lists to browse blocked or obscured sites.
