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-<!--
- Copyright © 2016-2018 Soren Stoutner <soren@stoutner.com>.
-
- This file is part of Privacy Browser <https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser>.
-
- Privacy Browser is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
- it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
- (at your option) any later version.
-
- Privacy Browser is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
- GNU General Public License for more details.
-
- You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- along with Privacy Browser. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. -->
-
-<html>
- <head>
- <meta charset="UTF-8">
-
- <link rel="stylesheet" href="../css/light_theme.css">
- </head>
-
- <body>
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/vpn_key_blue_light.png"> Tor and Its Limits</h3>
-
- <p>There are two general categories of bad actors that want to infringe on the privacy of the web:
- malicious governments with access to ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and mega corporations that run social and advertising networks.
- TOR (The Onion Router) is useful in protecting privacy from malicious governments (which spy on traffic in transit) but not from mega corporations (which embed malicious code on web servers).</p>
-
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/language_blue_light.png"> Malicious Governments</h3>
-
- <p>Malicious governments often spy on their citizens to punish dissent or human rights activity.
- They commonly either operate the local ISPs or they can force them to disclose information showing every IP address that is visited by each user.
- Tor is designed to defeat this infringement of privacy by encrypting the traffic from a user’s device and routing it through three separate servers on the internet
- before sending it on to the final destination.
- This means that no individual ISP, server, or website, can know both the <a href="https://ipleak.net">IP address the user’s device</a> and the IP address of the final web server.
- Malicious governments and the ISPs they control cannot tell which web servers a user is accessing, although they can tell that the user is using Tor.
- In some parts of the world, using Tor could be construed as an evidence of illegal behavior (“if you didn’t have anything to hide you wouldn’t be encrypting your traffic”)
- and users could be punished because governments assume they are doing something that is prohibited. Thus, Tor can be helpful, but isn’t a panacea.</p>
-
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/language_blue_light.png"> Mega Corporations</h3>
-
- <p>When a user connects to a web server, the web server can see the user’s IP address.
- Although it isn’t a perfect science, IP addresses can be turned into physical addresses with a <a href="https://www.whatismyip.com/">fair amount of accuracy</a>.
- Small web servers typically rely on IP addresses to identify the location of the users visiting their site. Tor is a good solution to mask the user’s location from these servers.
- But large mega corporations that own social media and advertising networks use a whole profile of information that is designed to track users across devices and IP addresses.
- These profiles employ a variety of techniques to identify users, including JavaScript, cookies, tracking IDs, and <a href="https://panopticlick.eff.org/">browser fingerprinting</a>.
- Because the vast majority of the websites on the internet either load an ad from one of the major networks or embed social media icons with their associated JavaScript,
- these corporations have built profiles for almost every user online and can track their internet activity across unrelated sites.</p>
-
- <p>They track every site that is visited, everything that is purchased, every credit card that is used to make a purchase, every address that items are shipped to,
- and the GPS metadata of every picture that is uploaded to the internet.
- They build a profile of a user’s age, gender, marital status, address, political affiliations, religious affiliations, family circumstances, number of pets,
- and everything else they can get their hands on.
- They even buy up databases of credit card transactions at local stores, so they can track the off-line purchasing patterns of the users in their profiles.
- Because they already have much more accurate address information about a user than an IP address discloses, Tor provides no real privacy protection against mega corporations.</p>
-
- <p>The single best privacy protection against mega corporations is to browse the web with JavaScript disabled, followed by blocking ad networks, disabling cookies and DOM storage,
- and using a browser that is difficult to fingerprint.</p>
-
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/orbot_blue_light.png"> Using Tor</h3>
-
- <p>Despite its limitations, Tor can be useful in some circumstances.
- The Tor project has an app for Android called Orbot, which is available on <a href="https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=orbot&fdid=org.torproject.android">F-Droid</a>
- and everywhere else that Privacy Browser is distributed. Privacy Browser has a setting to use Orbot as a proxy.
- When this is turned on, Privacy Browser’s app bar will have a light blue background instead of the default light grey.
- When Privacy Browser’s Orbot proxy setting is enabled, internet access will not work unless Orbot is running and connected to Tor.
- Because traffic is being routed through several Tor nodes, using Tor is often much slower than connecting directly to the internet.</p>
-
- <img class="center" src="images/tor.png">
-
- <h3><img class="title" src="../shared_images/file_download_blue_light.png"> Downloading Files Via Tor</h3>
-
- <p>When Orbot is operating in proxy mode, browsing the internet using Privacy Browser will be routed through the Tor network, but file downloads will not.
- This is because Privacy Browser uses Android’s builtin download manager to download files, which doesn't have a proxy option.
- Users who want to download files via Orbot need to enable its VPN mode.</p>
-
- <img class="center" src="../shared_images/vpn_mode.png">
- </body>
-</html>
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