12/31/2010 PERMALINK
How to build anonymity right into your home internet connection. The Tor software masks Web traffic by encrypting network messages and passing them through a series of relays (each Tor client can also become a relay for other users' messages). Many political activists, nonprofits, and businesses use Tor to encrypt and obscure what they do on the Internet. But using Tor has typically meant installing the software on a computer and then tweaking its operating system to ensure that all traffic is routed correctly through the program. Now the U.S.-based nonprofit that distributes Tor is developing a low-cost home router with the same privacy protection built in. 'We want to make anonymity something that can happen everywhere, all the time,' says Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor project developer. 'When you are connected to a router with Tor inside, all your traffic goes through Tor without you changing your system at all. It makes it simple to use.'