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Want to surf the web anonymously, without every website you visit collecting data about you? Sadly, remaining anonymous online isn't easy, everything from search engines to social networking sites are dropping cookies in your web browser to see how you behave -- which links you click, which ads you click, where you are and more.
To stop such data gathering is going to take a bit for work on your part, but it is possible and no, it won't break the whole web. Everything will work just as before, but no one will know who you are.
== Introducing Tor ==
[http://www.torproject.org/ Tor] is a free networking software program and allows you to use the internet anonymously.
When you log into to Tor you join a network of machines scattered around the world that pass internet traffic randomly amongst themselves before it emerges at its destination. The process is somewhat like a ball bouncing around inside a sealed box. Every now and then a ball comes out of the box, but it's impossible to tell who put it in the box to begin with.
The process is called "onion routing," and it was first developed at the Naval Research Laboratory. Tor uses a layered encryption protocol, which is where the onionskin analogy comes from. Tor is designed to defeat one specific type of digital eavesdropping known as traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that tracks who is talking to whom over a public network.
== Getting Started with Tor==
Tor only protects applications that route their traffic through it. That means you need to configure your web browser to first connect to Tor.
To get started with Tor, follow these simple steps:
# Download Tor for [http://www.torproject.org/easy-download.html.en Mac, PC or Linux].
# Install Tor
# Connect your browser to Tor. The easiest way to do this is using Firefox with the [https://www.torproject.org/torbutton/ Torbutton] add-on or Opera with the [http://archetwist.com/en/opera/operator OperaTor] extension. For other browsers you'll need to manually config your proxy settings, see the [https://www.torproject.org/documentation.html.en Tor documentation] for more details.
== What Tor Can and Cannot Do ==
It's important to understand what Tor does for you, specifically it anonymizes you, but it doesn't encrypt data or provide any security.
Also note that if you ever turn Tor off and visit a site that installs a cookie, that cookie can be used to track you even after you turn Tor back on. Consequently it's always a good idea to clear your cookies before you start using Tor.
The other thing to be aware of is that browser plugins can sometimes be used to track you even when you're using Tor. For that reason it's a good idea to disable Flash, ActiveX and any other plugins you may have installed.
==Future Outlook==
Already legal protections are starting to make their way into governments everywhere and a number of high profile companies have already pledge to cut back on the amount of data they collect.
Still, the future of cookies and online privacy looks bleakly Orwellian. Already sites are turning to Flash-based cookies and other tricks that make it even harder to cover your online tracks.
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