I installed Tor and...

[Jeffrey F. Bloss]

Homer wrote:

<much snippage>

> > There are subtle but important differences between privacy and
> > anonymity that need to be recognized in order to use Tor
> > effectively. Knowing when each "state" occurs helps you avoid the
> > things that can usurp any benefit Tor gives you. They certainly
> > overlap to a great extent, but one can be anonymous with no
> > privacy, and have privacy without being anonymous.

> Thanks for that great reply!  I am just playing around with it, and as
> such I'm not really concerned about being totally anonymous.  You

I'd wager a majority of Tor users stand under that umbrella, myself
included. In fact most of my Tor use connects back to my own machines
so I'm not worried about it at all, but it's good to be aware in any
case. Prepared for the rare scenario where you do need some real
security. Like for instance... if you got a chip on your shoulder and
wanted to help poison a Phishing site's data by going to their fake
"log in" page and entering bogus credit card data over and over. ;-)

Aside: As far as the disclaimer someone brought up goes, it's my
humble opinion this is more of a common sense issue than anything else.
The protocols and algorithms implemented are considered very secure or
the US Military wouldn't be using them in the Middle East as we
speak. ;) It is under heavy development though, and as such may be
prone to more transient "bugs" than some other software. This is more
an extension of "nothing is 100% safe" than it is a statement about any
technical aspect of Tor. 

> brought up an interesting point though, and that is it would be
> obvious to anyone watching on my end that I'm using Tor.  I'm thinking
> it might be better to just go ahead and surf digg, slashdot and yahoo
> news in the clear rather than being suspected of going to "other"
> sites.

Fortunately, in civilized jurisdictions just using encryption isn't
proof of anything, let alone a crime itself. There are places where
that's not true, but in general, using Tor won't get you labeled as a
pedophile or warez trader by anyone who counts. There will always be a
few ignorant people around offering themselves up as exceptions to the
rule of course, and since the Tor node list is public record this
ignorance of fact extends to the other end of your Tor circuit. There's
a few places that block Tor access entirely due to the juvenile
behavior of a tiny minority. :(

On your end you can "redefine" the problem by running your own Tor
node, even if it's only a middle-man. If you're inclined and able to
do that it doesn't hide the fact you're a Tor "participant", but it
certainly will help mask you own use by salting it in with everyone
else's.

On the other end all you can really do is help people understand what
Tor is, and why it's important. ;)

-- 
     _?_      Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
    (o o)         Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-oOO-(_)--OOo------------------------------[ Groucho Marx ]---
                    http://wrench.homelinux.net/~jeff/
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