Anonymity On-line | Linux Today

Anonymity On-line

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Jul 20, 2010

“We’ve covered Tor in LJ before (see Kyle Rankin’s “Browse the
Web without a Trace”, January 2008), but that was some time ago,
and this subject seems to be more timely with each passing day.
Also, with Tor being at only 0.2.x status, it still qualifies as
software in development, so I’m justified in featuring it this
month.

“For those not in the know, Tor stands for The Onion Router, and
its roots go all the way back to the US Naval Research Laboratory,
Tor’s original sponsors. It then became an EFF (Electronic Frontier
Foundation) project until 2005, and it now has moved up to being
its own nonprofit research/education organization: the Tor
Project.

“The essential idea is that your original IP address is masked
by passing it through numerous special routers, designed to avoid
keeping records, until the original source has been lost and the
receiving end knows only about the last Tor box it encounters. To
quote Tor’s man page:”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.