Ask Slashdot: Alternatives To Tor Browser Bundle For Windows?

SonnyJim writes "I frequently use Tor for my anonymous browsing needs, via the Tor Firefox bundle for Windows. I noticed that there are many other applications out there that use Tor as a proxy as well (Janus VM, ChrisPC, etc.) Are any of them more secure than the original Tor bundles, or am I just wasting my time trying these other applications? Is there anything more secure than Tor, as far as anonymous browsing goes?"

Comments

Tor

[x*yy*x]

I personally find it funny when people use Tor and then leave behind the same cookies, the same user-agent, LSO and Flash cookies, same system configuration, same screen size, same fonts, same installation and versions of plugins, same MAC address, don't change DNS servers and countless amount of other things that make it very easy to identify your other activity or what you're doing. Especially to Google via Google Analytics.

Nevermind also that half of the TOR network end nodes are monitored and sniff your traffic and can modify your browsing session in various ways. Just imagine the fun when you happen to use an end node that serves you a drive-by download exploit instead of the page you requested.

Re:Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally find it funny when people use Tor and then leave behind [...]same MAC address, don't change DNS servers [...]

Proof that you know less about this than you think you do. MAC addresses become irrelevant after the first network layer hop or an application layer gateway like TOR. Also TOR acts as a socks 5 proxy and will resolve names for you, again the the DNS settings are irrelevant.

Re:Tor

[cdp0]

Use TorButton then (the Windows bundle includes it IIRC). AFAIK it solves most of the problems you mentioned. If you are using Firefox 4 then you need the alpha version from here.

Add to that BetterPrivacy, and you should be much harder to track.

Re:Tor

[93 Escort Wagon]

I personally find it funny when people use Tor and then leave behind the same cookies, the same user-agent, LSO and Flash cookies, same system configuration, same screen size, same fonts, same installation and versions of plugins, same MAC address, don't change DNS servers and countless amount of other things that make it very easy to identify your other activity or what you're doing.

I solved this problem simply by finding out what your user-agent, LSO and Flash cookies, system configuration, screen size, fonts, plugins, MAC address, and default DNS servers were. Now whenever I'm on Tor I pretend to be x*yy*x - so I'm golden.

Re:Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy to fix when you use user agent switcher, ghostery, better privacy, noscript, google sharing, cloned mac addresses and torbutton.

Check out http://www.decloak.net to see how anonymous you are.

It's hard to beat Tor for anonymous public web browsing, but i2p is already a better darknet.

LiveCDs - TAILS v0.7.1, Liberté Linux

[integral-fellow]

First, don't bet your life on this technology or OpenSSH or other tech.

Second, rather than run TOR on an everyday personal or work computer (Windows or Mac or Linux) with sensitive data and identifiable traits, I'd recommend booting a LiveCD: TAILS (v0.7.1 is the latest) and Liberté Linux:

http://tails.boum.org/
http://dee.su/liberte

or get Knoppix and harden it:
http://knoppix.com/

Change your MAC and connect at a coffee shop (if paranoid-- on the other side of town, and wear sunglasses in case of surveillance), not from home. Or connect to someone else's open WiFi, or get the key with Backtrack. Less secure is running a LiveCD in a VM (virtualbox or vmware). Another less secure option is running a hardened Linux, or at least running the Bastille script.

What am I missing? The main trouble with the LiveCD/DVDs is the NIC driver/module, but Knoppix is good for that.

integral-fellow