Tor 0.1.1.26 review

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people who want to improve their safety and security on the Internet.

License: Freeware OS: Mac OS X File size: 13103K Developer: Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson Price: $0.00 Updated: 16 Dec 2006

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Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people who want to improve their safety and security on the Internet.
Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.

By default, Tor is configured to run at startup. If you do not want Tor to run on startup, you can disable this by selecting "Customize" in the Installer, and then un-checking the "Tor Startup Script" box. Be sure to leave the other boxes checked. Once the installer is finished and your computer restarts, Tor will start automatically. Tor comes configured as a client by default. It uses a built-in default configuration file in /Library/Tor/torrc, but most people won't need to change any of the settings.

Privoxy is installed as part of the Tor bundle package installer. Privoxy is a filtering web proxy that integrates well with Tor. Once it's installed, it will start automatically when your computer is restarted. You do not need to configure Privoxy to use Tor. A custom Privoxy configuration for Tor has been installed as part of the installer package.

Using privoxy is necessary because browsers leak your DNS requests when they use a SOCKS proxy directly, which is bad for your anonymity. Privoxy also removes certain dangerous headers from your web requests, and blocks obnoxious ad sites like Doubleclick.

To test if it's working, you need to know your normal IP address so you can verify that the address really changes when running Tor. Your local IP address is shown by the ifconfig command. If you are behind a NAT/Firewall you can use one of the sites listed below to check which IP you are using. When that is done, start Tor and Privoxy and visit any of the sites again. If everything works, your IP address should have changed.

What's New:
fixes more minor crashes and performance bugs.