Tor Browser

Tor browser Filehippo is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.

Tor or “The Onion Router” is a service created to allow people to anonymously browse the Internet. It is a decentralized system that allows users to connect through a network of relays rather than making a direct connection. The benefit of this method is that your IP address is hidden from the sites you visit by bouncing your connection from server to server at random, in essence, losing the trail.

Tor Browser: An essential tool for confidential communication:

Moreover, the National Security Agency (NSA) aka International Spying Agency keeps track of our digital footprints. Not to mention a restricted proxy server, which again can be used as a data ripping server is not the answer. And most of the corporations and companies won’t allow you to access a proxy server.

So, what we need here is an application, preferably small in size and let it be standalone, portable and which servers the purpose. Here comes an application – the Tor Browser, which has all the above-discussed features and even beyond that.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor’s hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they’re in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they’re working with that organization.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members’ online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company’s patent lawyers?

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open-source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used the Tor browser Filehippo while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their weblogs, and for security during sting operations.

Tor Browser Filehippo Features

Welcome Screen

Our old screen had way too much information for the users, leading many of them to spend great time confused about what to do. Some users at the paper experiment spent up to 40min confused about what they needed to be doing here. Besides simplifying the screen and the message, to make it easier for the user to know if they need to configure anything or not, we also did a ‘brand refresh’ bringing our logo to the launcher.

Censorship circumvention configuration

This is one of the most important steps for a user who is trying to connect to Tor while their network is censoring Tor. We also worked really hard to make sure the UI text would make it easy for the user to understand what a bridge is for and how to configure to use one. Another update was a little tip we added at the drop-down menu (as you can see below) for which bridge to use in countries that have very sophisticated censorship methods.

Proxy help information

The proxy settings at our Tor Launcher configuration wizard is an important feature for users who are under a network that demands such configuration. But it can also lead to a lot of confusion if the user has no idea what a proxy is. Since it is a very important feature for users, we decided to keep it in the main configuration screen and introduced a help prompt with an explanation of when someone would need such configuration.

As part of our work with the UX team, we will also be coordinating user testing of this new UI to continue iterating and make sure we are always improving our users’ experience. We are also planning a series of improvements not only for the Tor Launcher flow but for the whole browser experience (once you are connected to Tor) including a new user onboarding flow. And last but not least we are streamlining both our mobile and desktop experience: Tor Browser 7.5 adapted the security slider design we did for mobile bringing the improved user experience to the desktop as well.

Other Functions:

• We ship the first release in Tor’s 0.3.2 series, 0.3.2.9. This release includes support for the Next Generation of Onion Services.
• On the security side, we enabled content sandboxing on Windows and fixed remaining issues on Linux that prevented printing to file from working properly. Additionally, we improved the compiler hardening on macOS and fixed holes in the W^X mitigation on Windows.
• We finally moved away from Gitian/tor-browser-bundle as the base of our reproducible builds environment. Over the past weeks and months, rbm/tor-browser-build got developed making it much easier to reproduce Tor Browser builds and to add reproducible builds for new platforms and architectures. This will allow us to ship 64bit bundles for Windows (currently in the alpha series available) and bundles for Android at the same day as the release for the current platforms/architectures is getting out.

Tor Browser Highlights

1. Cross-platform availability of this application is available for Linux, Windows as well as Mac.
2. Complex data encryption before it sent over the Internet.
3. Automatic data decryption at client side.
4. It is a combination of the Firefox Browser + Tor Project.
5. It provides anonymity to servers and websites.
6. It makes it possible to visit locked websites.
7. Performs tasks without revealing the IP of Source.
8. Capable of routing data to/from hidden services and applications behind the firewall.
9. Portable – Run a pre-configured web browser directly from the USB storage device. No need to install it locally.
10. Available for architectures x86 and x86_64.
11. Easy to set FTP with Tor using the configuration as “socks4a” proxy on “localhost” port “9050”
12. Tor browser Filehippo is capable of handling thousands of relay and millions of users.

System requirements

Technical Specification

Available For: Windows + OS X + Linux  (Also Android version)

Some Facts about Tor Browser: Tor is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the original software project name “The Onion Router. The core principle of Tor, “onion routing”, was developed in the mid-1990s by the United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online. Onion routing was further developed by DARPA in 1997.