{"id":5777,"date":"2017-08-16T11:14:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T18:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/?post_type=post&#038;p=5777"},"modified":"2026-04-23T16:38:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T23:38:50","slug":"how-to-browse-the-web-anonymously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/how-to-browse-the-web-anonymously\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Browse the Web Anonymously"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DreamHost, a web-host, has revealed that they are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/aug\/14\/donald-trump-inauguration-protest-website-search-warrant-dreamhost\">fighting the US government warrant<\/a> requesting all information about every person who has visited the website www.disruptj20.org. Such information could include all subpages of disruptj20 that you surfed, how often you did so and the complete text of anything you might have typed into the page (such as donation or sign-up information).<\/p>\n<p>How many web-hosts and Internet service providers fulfill such requests without a fight and without letting its users know?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why we recommend anonymizing your web browsing with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.torproject.org\/\">Tor Browser<\/a>. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-5781 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1612\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor.png 1100w, https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor-500x178.png 500w, https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor-700x249.png 700w, https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor-200x71.png 200w, https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor-300x107.png 300w, https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor-768x274.png 768w, https:\/\/cldc.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/ScreenshotTor-1024x365.png 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1612px) 100vw, 1612px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Proper use of the Tor Browser would protect your identity from such overreaching requests.\u00a0 Tor works by routing your traffic through a sequence of servers (shown in the Tor circuit above) using <em>layers <\/em>of encryption (like the layers of an onion &#8212; Tor stands for <em>The Onion Router<\/em>).\u00a0 These layers of encryption guarantee that a server in the sequence only knows about the hop before and after itself.\u00a0 In the example above, all &#8220;Switzerland&#8221; knows is that you are accessing the Internet via Tor (i.e., not what webpage you are requesting) and all the &#8220;United States&#8221; knows is that someone is requesting the CLDC website via Tor (i.e., not who you are or what your location is).<\/p>\n<p>We recommend using the Tor Browser for browsing any webpage on which you don&#8217;t need to enter any personally identifiable information.\u00a0 (If you log in to a website, the webhost would know your username, possibly identifying you.)\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy!\u00a0 Just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.torproject.org\/\">download the browser<\/a> and use it as you would Firefox or Chrome.\u00a0 If you are finding that your web browsing experience is hampered, try one of the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Click on &#8220;New Tor Circuit for this Site&#8221; (via the onion icon in the picture above).\u00a0 Downloading speeds are only as fast as the slowest server in your circuit, and some servers are slow &#8212; requesting a new circuit of servers might fix this.\u00a0 Also, some websites block Tor by blocking particular servers that make up the circuit.\u00a0 If you can&#8217;t reach a website, requesting a new circuit might help.<\/li>\n<li>Try adjusting the &#8220;Security Settings&#8221; (also from the onion icon to the left of the web address bar).\u00a0 Lower security often improves performance playing videos and some other website features (with a small increased risk to your anonymity).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another tool many use for anonymous browsing is the Virtual Private Network (VPN).\u00a0 A VPN works as a middleman.\u00a0 You send all your web requests to a VPN provider of your choice (via an encrypted channel) and the VPN provider fetches the pages from the Internet for you.\u00a0 All a webhost would see is that a VPN provider is requesting and sending information (and nothing about you, unless you have entered personally identifiable information into the page).\u00a0 Of course, that VPN provider would be able to record your detailed browsing history, so you are putting a lot of trust in them for that reason.\u00a0 VPN providers can be one-stop-shops for government requests of information, so <a href=\"https:\/\/ssd.eff.org\/en\/module\/choosing-vpn-thats-right-you\">if you use a VPN, choose wisely<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As a final note, Tor is not perfect (no security tool is).\u00a0 One way that Tor users can be de-anonymized is via a <em>timing <\/em>or <em>correlation<\/em> attack where the attacker first observes (1) traffic accessing the Internet via Tor and (2) traffic being requested from the Internet via Tor and then tries to match up (1) and (2).\u00a0 However, this requires access to monitoring web traffic on a global scale and is likely only possible by nation-state adversaries.\u00a0 A common mistake is logging in to a non-anonymous social media or email account in the same web browsing session&#8211;this can easily let your Internet provider, social media\/email platform and other webpages (via &#8220;Like&#8221; or similar buttons) know your true identity and what you&#8217;re trying to browse anonymously.\u00a0 It&#8217;s best never to log in to social media or online accounts from Tor, unless you have a good reason.\u00a0 Finally, when using Tor, keep in mind it only provides <em>anonymity <\/em>&#8212; for <em>privacy<\/em>, you need to be accessing webpages using end-to-end encryption via HTTPS (though unfortunately not all websites support this).<\/p>\n<p>To learn how to make the most of anonymous web browsing and other in-depth digital security trainings, please <a href=\"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/about\/contact\/\">contact us<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Published August 16, 2017<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DreamHost, a web-host, has revealed that they are fighting the US government warrant requesting all information about every person who has visited the website www.disruptj20.org. Such information could include all subpages of disruptj20 that you surfed, how often you did so and the complete text of anything you might have typed into the page (such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[215,203,179,217,218,242],"class_list":["post-5777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-anonymity","tag-digital-security","tag-security","tag-tor","tag-vpn","tag-web"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18367,"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions\/18367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cldc.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}