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Internet & IT
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2006-09-23 02:32:06-04
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New browser lets users surf without a trace
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Sydney, Sept 22: If you want to browse the Internet without leaving any tracks, in total anonymity just download Torpark, an anonymous, fully portable Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox, released by Hacktivismo, an international group of computer security experts and human rights workers. Torpark comes pre-configured, requires no installation, can run off a USB memory stick, and leaves no tracks behind in the browser or computer. Torpark is a highly modified variant of portable Firefox that uses the TOR (The Onion Router) network to hide the connection between the user and the website that is being visited. When a user logs onto the Internet, a unique IP address is assigned to manage the computer's identity. Each website the user visits can see and log the user's IP address. Hostile governments and data thieves can easily monitor this interaction to correlate activity and pinpoint a user's identity. "Torpark causes the IP address seen by the website to change every few minutes to frustrate eavesdropping and mask the requesting source. For example, a user could be surfing the internet from a home computer in Ghana, and it might appear to websites that the user was coming from a university computer in Germany or any other country with servers in the TOR network," Sydney Morning Herald quoted the group as saying. Online privacy continues to be an important issue for many Internet citizens, as awareness of spyware threats and the danger of identity theft increases. Hacktivismo was formed out of the hacking group The Cult of The Dead Cow, which operates under a remit to fight "anyone or any government that aspires to limit free speech". "We live in a time where acquisition technologies are cherry picking and collating every aspect of our online lives," said Hacktivismo founder, Oxblood Ruffin. However, the current version of Torpark does not allow the user to run a different version of Firefox at the same time and also, using Torpark tends to slow down web browsing, and many web sites will break when browsed through the Tor network, including sites that use session trackers and anti-spam registration pages. The group also warns that that network cannot shield any data being transmitted between locations, which meant that users should avoid using username or password on websites that do not provide a secure login and session.
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