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project of the Naval Research Laboratory</a>. It was originally
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+ developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, primarily for the purpose of
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protecting government communications. Today, it is used every day
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for a wide variety of purposes by the military, journalists, law
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enforcement officers, activists, and many others. Here are some of
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<li><strong>They protect their privacy from unscrupulous marketers and identity thieves.</strong>
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- sell your Internet browsing records</a> to marketers or anyone else
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+ Internet Service Providers (ISPs) <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/29449-compete-ceo-isps-sell-clickstreams-for-5-a-month">sell
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+ your Internet browsing records</a> to marketers and anyone else
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willing to pay for it. ISPs typically say that
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they anonymize the data by not providing personally identifiable information, but
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<a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/08/71579?currentPage=all">this
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<li><strong>They protect their children online.</strong>
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- by not concealing their IP address. Increasingly, IP addresses can be <a href="http://whatismyipaddress.com/">literally mapped to a city or even street location</a>, and can <a href="http://whatsmyip.org/more/">reveal other information</a> about how you are connecting to the Internet.
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+ by not concealing their IP address. Increasingly, IP addresses can literally be <a href="http://whatismyipaddress.com/">mapped to a city or even street location</a>, and can <a href="http://whatsmyip.org/more/">reveal other information</a> about how you are connecting to the Internet.
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In the United States, the government is pushing to make this mapping increasingly precise.
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<li><strong>They research sensitive topics.</strong>
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It is not difficult for insurgents to monitor Internet traffic and
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discover all the hotels and other locations from which people are
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connecting to known military servers.
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<li><strong>Hidden services:</strong>
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- local strikes. However, some functions must be centralized, such as command and control sites. It's the nature of the Internet protocols to
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- reveal the geographic location of any server that is reachable online. Tor's hidden services capacity allows military command and
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+ When the Internet was designed by DARPA, its primary purpose was to facilitate distributed, robust communications in case of
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+ local strikes. However, some functions must be centralized, such as command and control sites. By their nature, Internet protocols
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+ reveal the geographic location of any server that is reachable online. Tor's <a href="<page docs/hidden-services>">hidden service capability</a> allows military command and
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control to be physically secure from discovery and takedown.
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+ to record a military address, thereby revealing that the site is under surveillance.
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- <h2><a class="anchor" href="#journalist">Journalists and their audience use Tor</a></h2>
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<li><strong><a href="http://www.rsf.org/">Reporters without Borders</a></strong>
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<li><strong>The US <a href="http://www.ibb.gov/">International Broadcasting Bureau</a></strong>
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(Voice of America/Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Asia) supports Tor development to help Internet users in countries without
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- safe access to free media. Tor preserves the ability of persons behind national firewalls or under
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- the surveillance of repressive regimes to obtain a global perspective on controversial topics including democracy,
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+ the surveillance of repressive regimes, to obtain a global perspective on controversial topics including democracy,
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economics and religion.
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<li><strong>Sting operations:</strong>
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Similarly, anonymity allows law officers to engage in online
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“undercover” operations. Regardless of how good an
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+ communications come from IP addresses allocated to the police, his cover is blown.
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<li><strong>Truly anonymous tip lines:</strong>
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software, they are far less useful. Sophisticated sources understand that
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+ although a name or e-mail address is not attached to information, server
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logs can identify them very quickly. As a result, tip line web sites that
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<li><strong>Human rights activists use Tor to anonymously report abuses from
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danger zones.</strong> Internationally, labor rights workers use Tor and other
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forms of online and offline anonymity to organize workers in accordance
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+ with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even though their actions are within
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the law, it does not mean they are safe. Tor provides the ability to
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+ “<a href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/">Race to the Bottom: Corporate
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Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship</a>.” The study
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co-author interviewed Roger Dingledine, Tor project leader,
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+ regarding Tor use. They cover Tor in the section on how to breach the <a
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href="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/china0806/3.htm#_Toc142395820">“Great
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+ Firewall of China”</a>, and recommend that human rights workers throughout
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<li>Tor has consulted with and volunteered help to <strong>Amnesty International's
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become dangerous. So his nonprofit has been working to
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local residents to <strong>urge reform in the company</strong> that dominated the town's
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economic and government affairs. She is fully cognizant that the kind of
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organizing she was doing <strong>could lead to harm or “fatal
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of information on Internet attacks. Such a repository requires members
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coordinated patterns and send out alerts. But if a specific bank in St. Louis is breached, they don't want an attacker watching the incoming
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- traffic to such a repository to be able to track where information is
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+ traffic to such a repository to where the report is
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+ sent from. Even if every packet were encrypted, the IP
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address would betray the location of a compromised system. Tor allows
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- such repositories of sensitive information to resist compromises.
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+ such repositories of sensitive information to resist eavesdropping.
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+ If you try to check out your competitor's pricing, you may find no
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information or misleading information on their web site. This is because
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their web server may be keyed to detect connections from competitors,
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- and block or spread disinformation to your staff. Tor allows a business
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- to view their sector as the general public would view it.
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+ and block your staff or spread disinformation to them. Tor allows a business
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+ to view its sector as the general public would view it.
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<li><strong>Keeping strategies confidential:</strong>
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An investment bank, for example, might not want industry snoopers to be
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able to track what web sites their analysts are watching. The strategic
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- importance of traffic patterns, and the vulnerability of the surveillance
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- of such data, is starting to be more widely recognized in several areas
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+ importance of traffic patterns, and the vulnerability of such data
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of the business world.
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<h2><a class="anchor" href="#itprofessionals">IT Professionals use Tor</a></h2>
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- <li>To verify IP based firewall rules: A firewall may have some policies that only allow certain IP addresses or ranges. Tor can be used to verify those configurations by using an IP number outside of the company's alloted IP block.</li>
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- <li>To bypass their own security systems for sensitive professional activities: For instance, a company may have a strict policy regarding the material employees can view on the internet. A log review reveals a possible violation. Tor can be used to verify the information without an exception being put into corporate security systems.</li>
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+ <li>To verify IP-address-based firewall rules: A firewall may have some policies that only allow certain IP addresses or ranges to access a site. Tor can be used to verify those configurations by using an IP number outside the company's alloted IP block.</li>
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+ <li>To bypass their own security systems for sensitive professional activities: For instance, a company may have a strict policy regarding the material employees can view on the internet. When a log review reveals a possible violation, Tor can be used to verify the information without putting an exception into corporate security systems.</li>
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<li>To connect back to deployed services: A network engineer can use Tor to remotely connect back to services, without the need for an external machine and user account, as part of operational testing.</li>
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- <li>To access internet resources: Acceptable use policy for IT Staff and normal employees is usually different. Tor can allow unfettered access to the internet while leaving standard security policies in place.</li>
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- <li>To work around ISP network outages: Sometimes when an ISP is having routing or DNS problems, Tor can make internet resources available, when the actual ISP is malfunctioning. This can be invaluable is crisis situations. </li>
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+ <li>To access Internet resources: Acceptable use policy for IT Staff and normal employees is usually different. Tor can allow unfettered access to the Internet while leaving standard security policies in place.</li>
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+ <li>To work around ISP network outages: Sometimes when an ISP is having routing or DNS problems, Tor can make Internet resources available, when the actual ISP is malfunctioning. This can be invaluable is crisis situations.</li>
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<p> Like any technology, from pencils to cellphones, anonymity can be used for both good and bad. You have probably seen some of the vigorous
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debate (<a href="http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/01/70000">pro</a>,
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<a href="http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html#kelly">con</a>, and <a
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- href="http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/anon.html">academic</a>) over anonymity. The Tor project is based on the belief that anonymity is not
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- just a good idea some of the time — it is a requirement for a free and functioning society. The <a href="http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity">EFF maintains a good overview</a> of how anonymity was crucial to the founding of the United States. Anonymity is recognized by US courts as a fundamental and important right. In fact, governments mandate anonymity in many cases themselves:
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+ href="http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/anon.html">academic</a>) over anonymity. The Tor Project is based on the belief that anonymity is not
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+ just a good idea some of the time — it is a requirement for a free and functioning society. The EFF maintains <a href="http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity">a good overview of how anonymity was crucial to the founding of the United States</a>. Anonymity is recognized by US courts as a fundamental and important right. In fact, governments mandate anonymity in many cases themselves:
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<a href="https://www.crimeline.co.za/default.asp">police tip lines</a>,
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<a href="http://www.texasbar.com/Content/ContentGroups/Public_Information1/Legal_Resources_Consumer_Information/Family_Law1/Adoption_Options.htm#sect2">adoption services</a>,
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<a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/aronson/20020827.html">police officer identities</a>,
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and so forth. It would be impossible to rehash the entire anonymity debate here — it is too large an issue with too many nuances, and there
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are plenty of other places where this information can be found. We do have a <a href="<page docs/faq-abuse>">Tor abuse</a> page describing some of
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the possible abuse cases for Tor, but suffice it to say that if you want to abuse the system, you'll either find it mostly closed for your
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- purposes (e.g. the majority of Tor relays do not support SMTP in order to prevent anonymous email spamming), or if you're one of the
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+ purposes (e.g., the majority of Tor relays do not support SMTP, in order to prevent anonymous e-mail spamming), or if you're one of the
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<a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html">Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse</a>,
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you have better options than Tor. While not dismissing the potential abuses of Tor,
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this page shows a few of the many important ways anonymity is used online today.</p>
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