If you have concerns about your traceability and you choose to submit your information in total anonymity, you will be using a submission system that is entirely based on the use of Tor technology, which is already integrated into our platform. Thus, as a whistleblower, in order to protect your anonymity, you must first download and install the Tor Browser. It is very easy and similar to using a normal browser:
The Tor Browser lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained.
How to Install and Use Tor Network in Your Web Browser
Tor technology protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world. It prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access internet sites that are blocked.
In this article, we will show how to install Tor (the anonymizing overlay network for TCP) software and configure your web browser (Firefox and Chrome) to use it as a proxy.
It is highly recommended to install the Tor package from the official project repository for reasons of stability and security fixes. DO NOT use the packages in the native repositories of Linux distributions, because they are frequently out of date. Follow the instructions below to set up an official package repository on your system.
To Torify your web browser, you need to use SOCKS directly by pointing your web browser at Tor (localhost port 9050). To confirm that tor is listening on this port, run the following netstat command.
The next step is to test if your browser has been successfully torified by visiting the link: check.torproject.org. If you see the message in the screenshot below, it means a correct configuration.
In this article, we have shown how to install Tor and configure your web browser to use it as a proxy. Keep in mind that Tor can not solve all anonymity problems. It only aims to protect the transport of data from one end to another. If you have any thoughts to share or questions, use the comment form below.
You'll need to tell your GNU/Linux that you want the ability to execute shell scripts.Navigate to the newly extracted Tor Browser directory.Right click on start-tor-browser.desktop, open Properties or Preferences and change the permission to allow executing file as program. Double-click the icon to start up Tor Browser for the first time.
When you start Tor Browser, you will see the Connect to Tor window.This offers you the option to either connect directly to the Tor network, or to configure Tor Browser for your connection.There's a checkbox which asks whether you always want to get automatically connected to the Tor network, if this is the case, check the box.
If you know your connection is censored, or you have tried and failed to connect to the Tor network and no other solutions have worked, you can configure Tor Browser to use a pluggable transport.'Bridges' will display the Circumvention section to configure a pluggable transport or to connect using Bridges.
If your connection uses a proxy you can configure it by clicking on 'Settings ...' against 'Configure how Tor Browser connects to the Internet'.In most cases, this is not necessary. You will usually know if you need to select this checkbox because the same settings will be used for other browsers on your system.If possible, ask your network administrator for guidance.If your connection does not use a proxy, click "Connect".
Once Tor sets up a connection to the Tor network, your traffic on the browser is secured, and you can use it freely. You can find more information within the Tor browser on their official website.
The exact installation procedure for Tor differs per device and operating system. But, as a general rule, you should first go to the Tor project download page to download the right installation file, if you want to use Tor on desktop, and to the Google Play Store if you want to install Tor on Android. For a detailed, step-by-step installation guide for your operating system, check out this article.
Other web browsers may offer private browsing and Incognito modes, but these modes do not hide your browsing history. Your internet provider will still know your browsing habits. Tor, however, can protect you from that.
As weird as it sounds to us, you could be turned away from a website because of your browser. The dark web is hard to access because it includes a lot of crime, but it also has dark web versions of mainstream news sites. This allows people in oppressive states to access undoctored news securely.
The Tor Browser works just like a regular web browser . Web browsers are programs you use to view web sites. Examples include Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Unlike other web browsers, though, the Tor Browser sends your communications through Tor, making it harder for people who are monitoring you to know exactly what you're doing online, and harder for people monitoring the sites you use to know where you're connecting from.
Some features of a normal web browser can make you vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. Other features have previously had bugs in them that revealed users' identities. Turning the security slider to a high setting disables these features. This will make you safer from well-funded attackers who can interfere with your Internet connection or use new unknown bugs in these features. Unfortunately, turning off these features can make some websites unusable. The default low setting is fine for everyday privacy protection, but you can set it to high if you are worried about sophisticated attackers, or if you don't mind if some websites do not display correctly.
Torrent file-sharing applications have been observed to ignore proxy settings and make direct connections even when they are told to use Tor.Even if your torrent application connects only through Tor, you will often send out your real IP address in the tracker GET request, because that's how torrents work.Not only do you deanonymize your torrent traffic and your other simultaneous Tor web traffic this way, you also slow down the entire Tor network for everyone else.
Tor Browser will block browser plugins such as Flash, RealPlayer, Quicktime, and others: they can be manipulated into revealing your IP address.Similarly, we do not recommend installing additional addons or plugins into Tor Browser, as these may bypass Tor or otherwise harm your anonymity and privacy.
Tor will encrypt your traffic to and within the Tor network, but the encryption of your traffic to the final destination website depends on that website.To help ensure private encryption to websites, Tor Browser includes HTTPS-Only Mode to force the use of HTTPS encryption with websites that support it.However, you should still watch the browser URL bar to ensure that websites you provide sensitive information to display a padlock or onion icon in the address bar, include in the URL, and display the proper expected name for the website.Also see EFF's interactive graphic explaining how Tor and HTTPS relate.
Tor tries to prevent attackers from learning what destination websites you connect to.However, by default, it does not prevent somebody watching your Internet traffic from learning that you're using Tor.If this matters to you, you can reduce this risk by configuring Tor to use a bridge rather than connecting directly to the Tor network.Ultimately the best protection is a social approach: the more Tor users there are near you and the more diverse their interests, the less dangerous it will be that you are one of them.Convince other people to use Tor, too!
Tor Browser gives you access to .onion web sites that are only available within the Tor network. For instance, try to access The New York Times at and Facebook at using a regular web browser. Go on. We'll still be here when you get back. Didn't work, did it? You can only reach these sites over Tor. This makes it possible to read the news anonymously, a desirable feature in a country where you don't want the government knowing which news sites you're reading, when you're reading them, and for how long.
Tor Browser routes all your web traffic through the Tor network, anonymizing it. As the images below illustrate, Tor consists of a three-layer proxy, like layers of an onion (hence Tor's onion logo). Tor Browser connects at random to one of the publicly listed entry nodes, bounces that traffic through a randomly selected middle relay, and finally spits out your traffic through the third and final exit node.
Alongside bouncing encrypted traffic through random nodes, the Tor browser deletes your browsing history and cleans up cookies after each session. But it has other clever tricks to push back against trackers. If someone visits two different sites that use the same tracking system, they'd normally be followed across both. The Tor browser spots such surveillance and opens each via a different circuit making the connections look like two different people, so the websites can't link the activity or identity if they login on one of the sites.
While some can simply install and use the Tor browser like any other, there are a few complications for those in countries where Tor is blocked, on corporate or university networks where it's banned, or where more security is needed. When you start a session, you'll be shown an option to Connect or Configure. The latter choice is for when access to the Tor network is blocked, and you'll be shown a variety of circumvention techniques. Those include traffic obfuscation tools called pluggable transports, which make it look like Tor traffic is random or going to major websites such as Amazon, rather than connecting to the onion network. If you're having trouble connecting to the Tor network, try one of these. 2ff7e9595c
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