Anonymous and secure surfing with Tails

Tor

Tails handles anonymizing the connection via the Tor network. By default, the SOCKS proxy is configured for all important programs, identifiable by the onion icon in the systray. You don't need the preconfigured Tor Browser Bundle [5] for Firefox, because all settings are preconfigured and the required add-ons are already installed, as a glance at the Firefox extensions reveals (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Tails developers preconfigured the browser to use the Tor network.

Not all installed extensions are directly related to Tor, but many of them handle anonymizing for protecting privacy, including the add-on HTTPS Everywhere [6] of the Electronic Frontier Foundation that provides secure connections to many popular websites. Of course, Tails provides the possibility of encrypting the USB stick via LUKS and uses OpenPGP for encrypting and signing email and documents.

Tails also encrypts instant messaging with OTR. You also have the option of using Nautilus Wipe to delete hard drives and overwrite them securely – important when of disposing of old computers. If you still want to surf without anonymization to visit, for example, locally installed web applications or to communicate with trusted shops or other services that depend on cookies to manage a session, you can enable the Insecure Browser function in Iceweasel. Tails then bypasses the Tor network and deactivates all anonymization functions.

Conclusion

Tails is a great application, especially its mobile use via a USB stick. It makes using it at home to set up a Tor proxy and the Tor Browser Bundle, really easy.

The Windows XP Camouflage, not only makes others oblivious to the fact you are using Linux, but Internet servers will also believe that they're dealing with Windows. An update of camouflage to Windows 7 would be welcome. l