Stay Anonymous using TOR

Hey guys.

In the past, there have been a few hacks that could be traced back by the police, because the hackers used VPN's.

The VPN providers gave the US goverment because of the patriot act all the information they wanted, so they can not really guarantee you to stay 100% Anonymous.

So as an alternative for VPNs to stay hidden, you can use TOR.

In this Tutorial, I will deal on how to do that.
The tutorial is seperated into these parts:

What is TOR and how does it work?
How do I Download and Install TOR?
How do I use TOR?




What is TOR and how does it work?
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TOR (The Onion Router)
is a network, that tunnels your traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of PC's.

That means, when you want to connect to a website using TOR, you wont connect directly, but you will connect first to another PC, which also connects to another PC etc.
This will happen a few times, while the connections are ecrypted.
after that, the last PC, the exitnode, will connect to the page you requested.

The server you connected to will only see the last one's IP address, so you stay hidden.

here is a small graphic:

How do I Download and Install TOR? 
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TOR can be downloaded here:
https://www.torproject.org/download/download

There you can Download the "Tor Browser Bundle"
Just pick your Language and OS.

When the Download has finished,
Just extract the date somewhere, using 7zip or winzip or whatever.

now, when done, just click the "start tor browser" application.
Yes! there is no Insstallation needed! great huh?

The Tor browser is basically a Firefox in a modified Aurora version.


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How do I use TOR? 
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Basically you can use TOR just as any other Web browser.
what I often do, is having one TOR and one usual Browser up, so for misc stuff i use tor and for things that need to be done quick i just use my normal firefox.

when you use TOR you will have to follow some rules, to stay hidden.

Want Tor to really work?

You need to change some of your habits, as some things won't work exactly as you are used to.
Use the Tor Browser

Tor does not protect all of your computer's Internet traffic when you run it. Tor only protects your applications that are properly configured to send their Internet traffic through Tor. To avoid problems with Tor configuration, we strongly recommend you use the Tor Browser Bundle. It is pre-configured to protect your privacy and anonymity on the web as long as you're browsing with the Tor Browser itself. Almost any other web browser configuration is likely to be unsafe to use with Tor.
Don't enable or install browser plugins

The Tor Browser will block browser plugins such as Flash, RealPlayer, Quicktime, and others: they can be manipulated into revealing your IP address. Similarly, we do not recommend installing additional addons or plugins into the Tor Browser, as these may bypass Tor or otherwise harm your anonymity and privacy. The lack of plugins means that Youtube videos are blocked by default, but Youtube does provide an experimental opt-in feature (enable it here) that works for some videos.
Use HTTPS versions of websites

Tor will encrypt your traffic to and within the Tor network, but the encryption of your traffic to the final destination website depends upon on that website. To help ensure private encryption to websites, the Tor Browser Bundle includes HTTPS Everywhere to force the use of HTTPS encryption with major websites that support it. However, you should still watch the browser URL bar to ensure that websites you provide sensitive information to display a blue or green URL bar button, include https:// in the URL, and display the proper expected name for the website.
Don't open documents downloaded through Tor while online

The Tor Browser will warn you before automatically opening documents that are handled by external applications. DO NOT IGNORE THIS WARNING. You should be very careful when downloading documents via Tor (especially DOC and PDF files) as these documents can contain Internet resources that will be downloaded outside of Tor by the application that opens them. This will reveal your non-Tor IP address. If you must work with DOC and/or PDF files, we strongly recommend either using a disconnected computer, downloading the free VirtualBox and using it with a virtual machine image with networking disabled, or using Tails. Under no circumstances is it safe to use BitTorrent and Tor together, however.
Use bridges and/or find company

Tor tries to prevent attackers from learning what destination websites you connect to. However, by default, it does not prevent somebody watching your Internet traffic from learning that you're using Tor. If this matters to you, you can reduce this risk by configuring Tor to use a Tor bridge relay rather than connecting directly to the public Tor network. Ultimately the best protection is a social approach: the more Tor users there are near you and the more diverse their interests, the less dangerous it will be that you are one of them. Convince other people to use Tor, too!

That's it.
have fun with TOR, and stay hidden!

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Thank you for reading!
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