Portable Tor
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| Portable Tor | |
|---|---|
| Design by | Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson |
| Developed by | Steve Morley |
| Latest release | Based on Vidalia Bundle 0.1.2.19-0.0.16-3 / June 2, 2008 |
| OS | Windows |
| Genre | Onion routing / Anonymity |
| License | GPL |
| Website | PortableTor Website |
PortableTor is a free repackaged version of the bundled Tor Software by Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson. The program allows the end user to connect to the Tor anonymity network from a removable media without installing anything to the hard drive. This allows the application bundle to be run from a USB flash drive or other portable devices and medias on any Windows computer, or Linux/UNIX computer running Wine. The program is fully functional as an anonymous gateway on its own, but requires other programs which actually use the network, such as Portable Firefox.
Contents |
[edit] Tor Network
Tor / PortableTor works by routing Internet traffic through several "onion" servers, obscuring the originating address. This naturally provides anonymity for other Internet programs that are configured to connect to it on the system, or even network. Applications can be directed to the Tor network through a SOCKS proxy at localhost on port 9050 as well as a HTTP proxy at localhost on port 8118. This port can be changed via the torrc configuration file in the Tor section of the program.
Reading the Tor documentation is highly recommended to prevent configuration mistakes that could compromise the user's anonymity. PortableTor comes with the default options as its installation counterpart, and configuration is encouraged as the user sees fit.
[edit] Changes
Updates and changes to the software are released in parallel as they are released on the official Tor page. A change log is available with each software release.
[edit] Features
- Gateway to the Tor anonymity network from any machine
- Use on removable media, no installation required
- Allows the end user to control what they want to do with Tor through their own choice of applications
