This archived Educause Live presentation took place on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. We think Tor and services like it are important for info pros to know about and understand how they work.

What is Tor:

Tor is an overlay network for anonymizing interactive communications such as web browsing, remote login, and chat. Originally designed by and for the Naval Research Laboratory to protect government communications, Tor has grown to a network of about a thousand volunteer-operated nodes around the globe and a user base of hundreds of thousands protecting their corporate, educational, military, law enforcement, and individual activities. The nonprofit Tor Project has also been funded by various sources to promote human rights and fight censorship. In this presentation we will describe Tor and its application in these areas. In particular we will focus on the design of hidden services, which can be accessed from anywhere even though the client does not know the server’s location.

On a related note, this article from the International Herald Tribune discusses, Relakks, from Sweden. This service (EUR 5.00 per month/EUR 50.00/year) anonymous IP-number (usually registered is Sweden).
From the article:

Relakks is planning its next move with a service – now in beta testing – that would allow computer users to shop online for national identity codes in a process known as “country shifting…Country shifting allows an Internet user to effectively change a computer’s “passport” and surf the Web under a new national identity, unrestricted by specific territorial barriers. Relakks plans to start its subscription service by employing American and Swedish codes. The addition of new country codes, [Relakks CEO Jonas] Birgersson said, would be based on demand.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 and is filed under Intellectual Property, Software and Web-Based Applications, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0, Webcasts and Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.