One thing that the article did not discuss is what steps you can take to protect your privacy. Strong encryption will protect your computer against unlawful search (I won't get in to being forced or compelled to surrendering your passwords), but does nothing to protect your online privacy.
This is where TOR comes in, The Onion Router. It's designed for online privacy, it encrypts and anonymizes your web traffic. Once your traffic is encrypted, your packets are bounced around TOR servers all over the world until eventually they get to your destination, and the return traffic is similarly encrypted/bounced. It doesn't matter if the destination server is part of the TOR network, as soon as the info hits the first router it's then encrypted for the return trip. Since it is encrypted as it leaves your computer, your ISP and no one outside of your computer cannot read your traffic.
TOR does not provide 100% security. It has recently been proved that it is possible to subvert a middle-man server and glean routing information, but I think the crypto was strong enough that it couldn't be easily broken. The entire project is open-source and thus has many eyes watching the code for back doors and subversion attempts.
There's also a performance hit. All of this additional encryption and routing slows down your information getting back to you. So it's something that most people don't use constantly, just when they want something to be truly private. There are other options for encrypting email and chat/text messaging.
And, of course, if your computer is infected with malware, there's no guarantee what can or cannot be read. And encrypting your hard drive does not protect you against malware, it just prevents your hard drives from being removed from your computer and read.
This is where TOR comes in, The Onion Router. It's designed for online privacy, it encrypts and anonymizes your web traffic. Once your traffic is encrypted, your packets are bounced around TOR servers all over the world until eventually they get to your destination, and the return traffic is similarly encrypted/bounced. It doesn't matter if the destination server is part of the TOR network, as soon as the info hits the first router it's then encrypted for the return trip. Since it is encrypted as it leaves your computer, your ISP and no one outside of your computer cannot read your traffic.
TOR does not provide 100% security. It has recently been proved that it is possible to subvert a middle-man server and glean routing information, but I think the crypto was strong enough that it couldn't be easily broken. The entire project is open-source and thus has many eyes watching the code for back doors and subversion attempts.
There's also a performance hit. All of this additional encryption and routing slows down your information getting back to you. So it's something that most people don't use constantly, just when they want something to be truly private. There are other options for encrypting email and chat/text messaging.
And, of course, if your computer is infected with malware, there's no guarantee what can or cannot be read. And encrypting your hard drive does not protect you against malware, it just prevents your hard drives from being removed from your computer and read.
https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en
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