Friday Video: How Tor Networks Work

Posted in Tech, video Tagged with: #fridayvideo, tor

anonabox : a Tor hardware router

So what IS the anonabox?
The anonabox is a networking device that provides anonymous Internet access and encryption, and helps to bypass censorship in places where access to the Internet is limited.

Reliable Anonymity
The anonabox has been developed and refined for the sole purpose of running the open source software Tor, considered the best and most secure way to access the Internet anonymously. All traffic coming out of or going into your computer or network is encrypted this way. The result is strong, secure anonymity. Using the anonabox hides your location, as well as all the other personal data that leaks through ordinary Internet use. We noticed also that pageload times and end user experience is significantly faster than when running the Tor browser bundle software, because all the hard work is being done in the background by the anonabox.

Encryption for Everyone
The anonabox easily encrypts Internet usage with a simple device that secures all web traffic, not just the traffic coming from one program. No software to download or configure, no login credentials, no registration, just plug it in and your network connection is encrypted. The anonabox also allows people to use programs over Tor that never supported it before or required complicated configuration like Skype, Safari and Filezilla, to name just a few. Also the default firewall configuration protects your computer or network from outside access.

Contribute @ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/augustgermar/anonabox-a-tor-hardware-router

Posted in Tech Tagged with: anonymity, kickstarter, tor

Tor for Android

Orbot is a free proxy app that empowers other apps to use the internet more securely. Orbot uses Tor to encrypt your Internet traffic and then hides it by bouncing through a series of computers around the world. Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.

Orbot is the only app that creates a truly private internet connection. As the New York Times writes, “when a communication arrives from Tor, you can never know where or whom it’s from.” Tor won the 2012 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award.

• ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES: Orbot is the safest way to use the Internet on Android. Period. Orbot bounces your encrypted traffic several times through computers around the world, instead of connecting you directly like VPNs and proxies. This process takes a little longer, but the strongest privacy and identity protection available is worth the wait.
• PRIVATE WEB SURFING: Use with Orweb, the most anonymous way to access any website, even if it’s normally blocked, monitored, or on the hidden web. Get Orweb: https://goo.gl/s3mLa
• PRIVATE CHAT MESSAGING: Use Gibberbot with Orbot to chat confidentially with anyone, anywhere for free. Get Gibberbot: https://goo.gl/O3FfS
• PRIVACY FOR APPS: Any installed app can use Tor if it has a proxy feature, using the settings found here: https://goo.gl/2OA1y Use Orbot with Twitter, or try private web searching with DuckDuckGo: https://goo.gl/lgh1p
• PRIVACY FOR EVERYONE: Tor can help you confidentially research a competitor, get around the Facebook block at school, or circumvent a firewall to watch sports at work.
• PRIVACY MADE EASY: Check out our fun, interactive walkthrough: https://guardianproject.info/howto/browsefreely
• IT’S OFFICIAL: This is the official version of the Tor onion routing service for Android.

Get it @ the Google Play Store.

Posted in Tech Tagged with: android, privacy, tor

Pirate Bay Releases ‘Pirate Browser’ to Thwart Censorship

The Pirate Bay is taking a stand against the increased censorship efforts it faces in several European countries. On its 10th anniversary the infamous BitTorrent site is releasing its “Pirate Browser,” a fully functional web browser that allows people to access The Pirate Bay and other blocked sites just fine. The current release is Windows only but TorrentFreak is informed that Mac and Linux versions will follow soon.

Read the full article and get the download link @ TorrentFreak.com.

Note: I downloaded this using chrome and it kept giving me warning after warning about the dangerousness of the program I was trying to download. Then Windows (8) kept warning me about how dangerous it was to install the program. I did download, install, and use it over the weekend and I’ve noticed no ill effects.

Posted in Tech Tagged with: pirate bay. privacy, tor

Download Five Years of Tor.com’s Original Fiction for Free!

Tor.com is celebrating its fifth birthday this week and as one of the many things we’re doing to mark the occasion, we’ve assembled the entire last five years of our award-winning original fiction into one handy, and possibly physics-defying, ebook.

This ebook is free to Tor.com’s registered users to download, as a thank you for joining and contributing to our community over the years. Enjoy!

Download @ TOR.com. (Registration required.)

Posted in ebooks Tagged with: free, science fiction, tor

Publishing Jargon-Buster: Ten Words Unpacked

I was a bookseller for ten years, I’ve been a librarian for nearly 20, and a published author for more than ten, and I still learned a few things from this article.

In publishing, as in any other industry, we scatter our days with curious and unusual words which we take for granted. But even for us, new ones pop up to surprise us every now and then. Thinking of Blippar and Wibalin here—though I thought for a while that our books were bound with wibbling. Which made me laugh! Here to entertain and explain are ten bits of jargon, don’t use them all at once….

3) GSM

Grams per square metre: a term used to specify the weight of paper. As an example, a standard piece of A4 paper is 90gsm and a standard printed fiction book might be printed on 52-120gsm. An illustrated book might be printed on glossy “photographic” paper so the pictures show up well, on a heavier weight of paper than used for a standard novel.

Read the full article @ TOR.com.

Posted in Books Tagged with: glossary, publisher, publishing, tor

One Year Later, the Results of Tor Books UK Going DRM-Free

On April 25, 2012, Tor Books UK announced that it was making all of its ebook list DRM-free. There’s still a lot of debate and interest in the topic. I recently wrote a piece about the subject for Publishers Weekly which I’ve replicated here.

We made this decision in conjunction with our sister company in the US, for our shared brand imprint. It was something that we’d been exploring for quite a while and a move that we felt committed to for our particular area.

…

For our particular readership, we felt it was an essential and fair move. The genre community is close-knit, with a huge on-line presence, and with publishers, authors and fans having closer communication than perhaps some other areas of publishing do. Having been in direct contact with our readers, we were aware of how frustrated many of them were by DRM. Our authors had also expressed concerns at the restrictions imposed by the copyright coding applied to their ebooks. When both authors and readers are talking from the same page, it makes sense for the publishers to sit up, listen and take note—and we did!

Read the full article on TOR.com.

Posted in ebooks Tagged with: drm, publisher, tor

The return of free TOR ebooks

Free Ebooks from World Fantasy Award Finalists

Last week we announced the return of free ebooks from Tor.com. We’re kicking things off this week with backlist titles from two of the authors who are finalists for this year’s World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. To download these and upcoming freebies, all you have to do is register at Tor.com.

Will Shetterly and Emma Bull are the first married couple to each simultaneously have a novel among the finalists for the World Fantasy Award—Emma’s Territory and Will’s The Gospel of the Knife. In commemoration of this, we’re offering registered Tor.com users free e-book editions of a pair of classics from the Bull and Shetterly backlists—Emma’s War for the Oaks and Will’s Dogland. Check them out here!

Each title in our giveaway program will be available for A Limited Time Only, so don’t delay. The books will be offered in a variety of formats, with no DRM. After this month’s pair of books, we’ll be putting up a new title every month, so make sure you register—and tell your friends about the great books (and blogs, and art, and conversation) that are free at Tor.com every day.

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Tagged with: ebooks, science fiction, tor