The Confidential Resource

The Onion Router (TOR)

Thousands of people around the world use Onion Routing or  TOR to do things on the Internet. Private Investigators should use it to maintain anonymity during investigations.

TOR protects you by routing your Internet traffic through a cloud of relays around the world.  This prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Remember, a  full record of every site you visit, the text of every search you perform, and potentially userid and even password information may remain in the data your ISP keeps on your Internet use. In addition to your ISP, the websites and search engines keep logs containing similar information.

During Competitive Intelligence projects, I have found certain web servers that serve-up disinformation to the competitor’s IP addresses. TOR can prevent this. TOR works with applications based on the TCP protocol. This includes web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications.

TOR does not protect you if you do not use it correctly. No anonymity system is perfect, and TOR is no exception: you should not rely solely on the current TOR, but it is a good start. You must learn to use it correctly and understand its weaknesses.

When using TOR set your first page to http://whatismyipaddress.com to see if your location and IP address has changed before going anywhere else. Remember, the connection will be slow responding when you use TOR as compared to a normal connection.

Privoxy

Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data, managing HTTP cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs.

A filtering proxy can be used to reduce the threat of identifying information from a client reaching a server. I normally use this to filter outbound personal information that my browser is leaks, as well as inbound junk, and Onion Routing and TOR require something like Privoxy as a filter to prevent the transmission of identifying data.

 XeroBank Browser

The free XeroBank browser includes several privacy-enhancing add-ons and sends all data through a network ‘cloud’ which hides most of the data you normally give away as you use a computer, but at the cost of reduced speed. You can use TOR for free, but XeroBank also offers its own fee-based encrypted anonymous proxy server network.

Update: See Xerobank, Zero Customer Service

 Anonymous email

Anonymous email can be useful for Investigators.  However, many such services only offer one-way communication.  Many anonymous email services do not allow the recipient to reply. For a list of anonymous and other useful email services go to this Google Directory.