Secret Surfer

We are often told that we should be concerned about the snooping activities of governments and commercial organizations. A number of open source tools can provide users with enhanced privacy, and I recently came across a useful candidate: a clever Linux distribution called Whonix [1]. I was encouraged by a line on the Whonix website declaring that the distro was "As handy as an app – delivering maximum anonymity and security." I'm sure you will agree that the trade off between usability and privacy can be exceptionally frustrating.

In this article, I show you how to install Whonix and make use of its sophisticated features.

First Things First

Before looking at Whonix, I will offer a quick introduction to the Tor [2] network. Tor is a sophisticated network operated by thousands of volunteers who share some bandwidth with other users. Encrypted packets take a random path through the nodes of the network in a way that hides the original source address. When traffic leaves the Tor network for the Internet, it's very difficult, some say almost impossible, to identify the user's online activity. To my mind, Tor is an engineering masterpiece; however, it does allow nefarious activities to take place online, so be warned that as a user, you are accessing a network that is sometimes used for illegal activities. It could be argued that the same warning applies to the Internet of course.

[...]