EFF to sponsor Tor

http://p2pnet.net/story/3357

"The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) says it will sponsor Tor, a technology project created to help organizations and individuals communication with each other anonymously online.

"Tor is a network-within-a-network that protects communication from a form of surveillance known as "traffic analysis," says the EFF, adding:

"Traffic analysis tracks where data goes and when, as well as how much is sent, rather than the content of communications.

"Knowing the source and destination of Internet traffic allows others to track a person's behavior and interests. This can impact privacy in obvious and secondary ways. For example, an e-commerce site could choose to charge you more for particular items based on your country or institution of origin. It could also threaten your job or physical safety by revealing who and where you are."

Tor says people can use it to keep remote websites from tracking them and family members, as well as to connect to resources such as news sites or instant messaging services blocked by their local ISPs.

But it can't solve all anonymity problems, it says on its web site, adding:

"It focuses only on protecting the transport of data. You need to use protocol-specific support software if you don't want the sites you visit to see your identifying information. For example, you can use web proxies such as Privoxy while web browsing to block cookies and withhold information about your browser type.

Also, to protect your anonymity, be smart. Don't provide your name or other revealing information in web forms. Be aware that, like all anonymizing networks that are fast enough for web browsing, Tor does not provide protection against end-to-end timing attacks: If your attacker can watch the traffic coming out of your computer, and also the traffic arriving at your chosen destination, he can use statistical analysis to discover that they are part of the same circuit."

See also: http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_12.php#002174

Why do we need something like this, you ask?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12...ernet_wiretap/

Anyway, I've been using a combo of Tor, Privoxy and SocksCap for the last week or so. Although definitely slow at times, it's at least as fast as JAP - and it's never putting all your egg's in one basket. It has passed every "IP identification site" I've thrown at it with flying colors.

You all really should consider playing with this - it's possibly one of the few ways we'll be able to surf anywhere near anonymously in the future. Pete