The hidden wiki tor links directory

The Tor Project, Inc, became a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2006, but the idea of "onion routing" began in the mid 1990s.

Just like Tor users, the developers, researchers, and founders who've made Tor possible are a diverse group of people. But all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief: internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.

In the 1990s, the lack of security on the internet and its ability to be used for tracking and surveillance was becoming clear, and in 1995, David Goldschlag, Mike Reed, and Paul Syverson at the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) asked themselves if there was a way to create internet connections that don't reveal who is talking to whom, even to someone monitoring the network. Their answer was to create and deploy the first research designs and prototypes of onion routing.

The goal of onion routing was to have a way to use the internet with as much privacy as possible, and the idea was to route traffic through multiple servers and encrypt it each step of the way. This is still a simple explanation for how Tor works today.

In the early 2000s, Roger Dingledine, a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, began working on an NRL onion routing project with Paul Syverson. To distinguish this original work at NRL from other onion routing efforts that were starting to pop up elsewhere, Roger called the project Tor, which stood for The Onion Routing. Nick Mathewson, a classmate of Roger's at MIT, joined the project soon after.

From its inception in the 1990s, onion routing was conceived to rely on a decentralized network. The network needed to be operated by entities with diverse interests and trust assumptions, and the software needed to be free and open to maximize transparency and separation. That's why in October 2002 when the Tor network was initially deployed, its code was released under a free and open software license. By the end of 2003, the network had about a dozen volunteer nodes, mostly in the U.S., plus one in Germany.

Recognizing the benefit of Tor to digital rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began funding Roger's and Nick's work on Tor in 2004. In 2006, the Tor Project, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, was founded to maintain Tor's development.

In 2007, the organization began developing bridges to the Tor network to address censorship, such as the need to get around government firewalls, in order for its users to access the open web.

Tor began gaining popularity among activists and tech-savvy users interested in privacy, but it was still difficult for less-technically savvy people to use, so starting in 2005, development of tools beyond just the Tor proxy began. Development of Tor Browser began in 2008.

With Tor Browser having made Tor more accessible to everyday internet users and activists, Tor was an instrumental tool during the Arab Spring beginning in late 2010. It not only protected people's identity online but also allowed them to access critical resources, social media, and websites which were blocked.

The need for tools safeguarding against mass surveillance became a mainstream concern thanks to the Snowden revelations in 2013. Not only was Tor instrumental to Snowden's whistleblowing, but content of the documents also upheld assurances that, at that time, Tor could not be cracked.

People's awareness of tracking, surveillance, and censorship may have increased, but so has the prevalence of these hindrances to internet freedom. Today, the network has thousands of relays run by volunteers and millions of users worldwide. And it is this diversity that keeps Tor users safe.

We, at the Tor Project, fight every day for everyone to have private access to an uncensored internet, and Tor has become the world's strongest tool for privacy and freedom online.

But Tor is more than just software. It is a labor of love produced by an international community of people devoted to human rights. The Tor Project is deeply committed to transparency and the safety of its users.

Tails is a live system that aims to preserve your privacy and anonymity. It helps you to use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship almost anywhere you go and on any computer but leaving no trace unless you ask it to explicitly.

It is a complete operating system designed to be used from a USB stick or a DVD independently of the computer's original operating system. It is Free Software and based on Debian GNU/Linux.

Tails comes with several built-in applications pre-configured with security in mind: web browser, instant messaging client, email client, office suite, image and sound editor, etc.

Online anonymity and censorship circumvention
Tor

Tails relies on the Tor anonymity network to protect your privacy online:

all software is configured to connect to the Internet through Tor
if an application tries to connect to the Internet directly, the connection is automatically blocked for security.

Tor is an open and distributed network that helps defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.

Using Tor you can:

be anonymous online by hiding your location,
connect to services that would be censored otherwise;
resist attacks that block the usage of Tor using circumvention tools such as bridges.

Use anywhere but leave no trace

Using Tails on a computer doesn't alter or depend on the operating system installed on it. So you can use it in the same way on your computer, a friend's computer, or one at your local library. After shutting down Tails, the computer will start again with its usual operating system.

Tails is configured with special care to not use the computer's hard-disks, even if there is some swap space on them. The only storage space used by Tails is in RAM, which is automatically erased when the computer shuts down. So you won't leave any trace on the computer either of the Tails system itself or what you used it for. That's why we call Tails "amnesic".

This allows you to work with sensitive documents on any computer and protects you from data recovery after shutdown. Of course, you can still explicitly save specific documents to another USB stick or external hard-disk and take them away for future use.

State-of-the-art cryptographic tools

Tails also comes with a selection of tools to protect your data using strong encryption:

Encrypt your USB sticks or external hard-disks using LUKS, the Linux standard for disk-encryption.

Automatically use HTTPS to encrypt all your communications to a number of major websites using HTTPS Everywhere, a Firefox extension developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Encrypt and sign your emails and documents using the de facto standard OpenPGP either from Tails email client, text editor or file browser.

Protect your instant messaging conversations using OTR, a cryptographic tool that provides encryption, authentication and deniability.

Securely delete your files and clean your diskspace using Nautilus Wipe.

Read more about those tools in the documentation.

Download tails here : https://tails.boum.org/about/index.en.html

Tor through VPN

In this configuration you connect first to your VPN server, and then to the Tor network before accessing the internet:

Your computer -> VPN -> Tor -> internet

Although some of the providers listed above offer to make such a setup easy, this is also what happens when you use the Tor Browser or Whonix (for maximum security) while connected to a VPN server, and means that your apparent IP on the internet is that of the Tor exit node.

Pros:

Your ISP will not know that you are using Tor (although it can know that you are using a VPN)
The Tor entry node will not see your true IP address, but the IP address of the VPN server. If you use a good no-logs provider this can provide a meaningful additional layer of security
Allows access to Tor hidden services (.onion websites).

Cons:

Your VPN provider knows your real IP address
No protection from malicious Tor exit nodes. Non-HTTPS traffic entering and leaving Tor exit nodes is unencrypted and could be monitored
Tor exit nodes are often blocked
We should note that using a Tor bridge such as Obfsproxy can also be effective at hiding Tor use from your ISP (although a determined ISP could in theory use deep packet inspection to detect Tor traffic).

Important note: Some VPN services (such as NordVPN, Privatoria and TorVPN) offer Tor through VPN via an OpenVPN configuration file (which transparently routes your data from OpenVPN to the Tor network). This means that your entire internet connection benefits from Tor through VPN.

Please be aware, however, that this is nowhere near as secure as using the Tor browser, where Tor encryption is performed end-to-end from your desktop to the Tor servers. It is possible that with transparent proxies your VPN provider could intercept traffic before it is encrypted by the Tor servers. The Tor Browser has also been hardened against various threats in a way that your usual browser almost certainly has not been.

VPN through Tor

This involves connecting first to Tor, and then through a VPN server to the internet:

Your computer -> encrypt with VPN -> Tor -> VPN -> internet

This setup requires you to configure your VPN client to work with Tor, and the only VPN providers we know of to support this are AirVPN and BolehVPN . Your apparent IP on the internet is that of the VPN server.

Pros

Because you connect to the VPN server through Tor, the VPN provider cannot ‘see’ your real IP address – only that of the Tor exit node. When combined with an anonymous payment method (such as properly mixed Bitcoins) made anonymously over Tor, this means the VPN provider has no way of identifying you, even if it did keep logs
Protection from malicious Tor exit nodes, as data is encrypted by the VPN client before entering (and exiting) the Tor network (although the data is encrypted, your ISP will be able to see that it is heading towards a Tor node)
Bypasses any blocks on Tor exit nodes
Allows you to choose server location (great for geo-spoofing)
All internet traffic is routed through Tor (even by programs that do not usually support it).

Cons

Your VPN provider can see your internet traffic (but has no way to connect it to you)
Slightly more vulnerable to global end-to-end timing attack as a fixed point in the chain exists (the VPN provider).

This configuration is usually regarded as more secure since it allows you to maintain complete (and true) anonymity.

Remember that to maintain anonymity it is vital to always connect to the VPN through Tor (if using AirVPN or BolehVPN this is performed automatically once the client has been correctly configured). The same holds true when making payments or logging into a web-based user account.
Malicious Exit Nodes

When using Tor, the last exit node in the chain between your computer and open internet is called an exit node. Traffic to or from the open internet (Bob in the diagram below) exits and enters this node unencrypted. Unless some additional form of encryption is used (such as HTTPS), this means that anyone running the exit node can spy on users’ internet traffic.


Here's a list of VPN services accepting payment in bitcoins :


NordVPN
ExpressVPN
CyberGhost
IPVanish
AirVPN
PrivateInternetAccess