"You may never think about it, but many of your online activities may be monitored and analyzed. Advertising companies, government agencies, and private users can use traffic analysis to gather information about which Web sites and pages you visit, what newsgroups you read, and whom you talk to on IRC. While there is no need to be paranoid (or is there???), you can keep your online communication private. The Tor project can help you with that.
"Traffic analysis is based on the fact that every packet of data sent from your computer includes a header containing information about source, destination, size, timing, and other items. If you take a look at a packet header you can at the very least see who sent the the data packet. That's what traffic analysis in its simplest form is about: intercepting data packets and looking at their headers..."
