The recent fiasco with SOPA and PIPA, and now ACTA has thrown into sharp relief the question of online privacy and freedom. Who controls our personal data? Who has access to it? How do we know someone’s not tracking us online? Who can we actually trust? What can we actually share? These questions were already pertinent and if ACTA passes, they’ll become something that everyone on the Internet will have to ask themselves every time they log on.
I don’t know how much everybody here knows about tech geeks, but we don’t take kindly to being told how to approach our passion. It’s no surprise that the tools below surfaced. Tools which you can use not only to ensure you have a private and free browsing experience, but a safe one to boot. The best part?
They’re all free.
Tor: Mask your IP and Prevent Traffic Analysis
First on our list, we’ve got The Onion Router. Believe it or not, most websites you connect to track you in some way shape or form. Whether its what you access on the site or your browsing habits on and off the site – it’s something known as traffic analysis. The Onion Router’s designed to circumvent this by routing your connection through a series of network tunnels. You can also use it to publish material online without having to reveal your location (generally, your IP address is a dead giveaway), and for communiques that you don’t want to see getting into the public eye.
Oh, and it also lets you bypass national firewalls that might restrict access to certain information and lets you connect to websites that your ISP has blocked to boot.
You can find out more about how TOR works by clicking here.
It’s pretty easy to use, as well. The .exe is a self-extracting .zip file. Open it, extract all the necessary files, then run “Tor Browser.”
If TOR doesn’t quite catch your fancy, there’s a whole gallery of other tools you can utilize too.
Freenet: Be Free from Censorship
Freenet is pretty much what’s written on the box. It’s a branch of the Internet that’s completely free from corporate and governmental influences. Using Freenet, users will be able to anonymously share files as well as accessing and creating websites known as “freesites” (online locations accessible only to Freenet). Decentralized, encrypted, and difficult to detect Freenet is essentially a reaction to the rampant censorship and blatant control businesses are attempting to exert on the ‘net.
If ACTA successfully starts influencing legislation, I’d imagine Freenet’s going to be receiving a great deal of traffic in the near future. For now, I’d keep it bookmarked just in case.
To install it, all you need to do is download the file. A portion of your hard drive is used for the operation of Freenet and to act as a ‘node’ of the network. Aside from that, all you need to do is browse.
Cypherpunks OTR: Keep Your Communication Secret
If you’re concerned someone might be tapping in to read your instant messages, it might be worth looking into Cypherpunk’s “Off-The-Record Messaging” software. Basically, OTR encrypts any IM communication you engage in making it incredibly difficult for anyone to track or listen in to what you’re talking about. Unfortunately, it doesn’t currently offer direct support for Windows Live Messenger or Skype so you’ll need to download one of the clients that can currently utilize the encryption tool. Once you’ve done so, it’s a simple matter of extracting and running the plugin.
If you’re having trouble, there’s a rather excellent video tutorial here that’ll help you through it.
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