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There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services JAP [1], is totally free. In fact JAP is perhaps a little too good. That’s why the German Police insisted in 2004 that a backdoor be put into the product to allow interception of child pornographers. This was done but subsequently removed as a result of court action by JAP.

An alternative to JAP is a system called Tor [2]. It not only allows anonymous browsing but anonymous P2P, email, IM, and IRC chat as well. Given the US Navy origin of Tor, the suspicion arises that this system may indeed have a permanent backdoor. However the source code is now publicly available so that suspicion can perhaps be set aside. More worrying was a raid by German police in September 2006 involving the seizing of some Tor servers in that country. Again, pedophiles were the supposed target but who really knows.

Whatever, both JAP and Tor offer a level of secrecy that is better than many commercial systems though not watertight. Do expect your surfing to slow down as you’ll be relayed through a chain of servers particularly with Tor which has been ground to a near standstill by BitTorrent users seeking to hide from the RIAA. Note: the latest V5 release of JAP now allows Tor users to use JAP as a software access point.

A recent development is the release of the XeroBank Browser [3], previously called TorPark, a special version of the Firefox browser that has been configured to work with the free Tor anonymizing service and run directly from a USB flash drive. It’s a neat idea; just plug in your USB stick to any PC with a USB port and Firefox V2 is automatically launched, set up for secure and private surfing.

The most obvious application is internet cafes, public terminals or indeed any PC including your own where you don’t want to leave any trace of your private surfing activities. However, what attracts me is not so much the privacy side as the security potential. That’s because TorPark creates a secure encrypted connection between the PC you are using and the first Tor server. This allows you to safely transmit information without fear of local interception. This makes it ideal for surfing on open Wi-Fi networks. Previously, secure surfing on such networks required the use of private VPN networks, an option only available to corporates, the well-heeled and the technically savvy. Now, using XeroBank Browser, any surfer can reap the same security benefits for their browsing.

An alternative to XeroBank is OperaTor [4] which is a portable version of Opera with Tor built in. It’s smaller and faster than XeroBank though Firefox users will feel more comfortable with Xerobank.

[1] http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html Freeware, Any Windows system with Java, 5.5MB
[2] http://tor.eff.org/ Free BSD License, All Windows, 6.3MB
[3] http://www.xerobank.com/xB_browser.html Freeware, Windows NT and later, 8.8MB
[4] http://letwist.net/operator Freeware, All Windows versions, 6.4MB

\\ tags: Freeware, Software