TOR browser usage has increased in United States from the day Edward Snowden leaked out the info that all the US populace internet activity was being monitored by NSA Prism. On seeing the sudden rush, the onion browser authorities made an announcement that they will come up with a box packed with TOR features for the mass market.
Keeping their promise, TOR launched a $49 device called ‘Safeplug’ yesterday and is targeting all those consumers who would like to use their internet connectivity through Tor connection. The other highlight of safeplug is that it can block online ads, but only when the user chooses to customize certain features of it.
Safeplug is developed by the company called Pogoplug, whose main business is IP Storage and data backup service offering. The main motive of the company was to make TOR activity more family friendly way and for that reason, they came up with Safeplug.
In general, TOR is used by online activists, criminals and US Intelligence to obscure traces of their web activities. But it is not that easy to use TOR as it requires a lot of downloading of softwares and a new web browser. In order to make things simple to home users, Safeplug is a device which has to be simply connected to the home internet router and that makes the consumer use TOR services. At this point, Safeplug acts as a proxy server by acting as a mediator for the data traffic flowing in & out. As specified earlier, this smart device is having an in-built ad blocker which is by default disabled, as its activation is dependent on user’s choice.
Putterman, Chief product officer of Safeplug said that users can keep their online activity safe from ISP servers and ad networks which target the users based on the location, time, IP address and content which was being accessing.
Now, for all those who are disturbed by NSA Prism activities, safeplug may act as a good solution for your concern.
However, Megmet Gunes, a professor from University of Nevada who studies anonymity tools, has a different opinion on Safeplug. He said that online users can only stay safe when they adjust or change their certain online behavior. The reason for his change in viewpoint is due to the fact that TOR allows its users link from source to destination, but may not make them completely anonymous. This is due to the reason that online activity can be easily traced out when information of the user flows through Flash plug-ins and other media add-ons which TOR doesn’t envelop or keep anonymous.
All those who use TOR might be familiar with this fact, as the TOR project download clearly mentions that users need to change certain habits of them in order to enjoy the full benefits of using onion browser.
Going through the TOR concept, internet traffic is kept private by making it take an indirect route to the servers. This is possible by hiding a person’s IP address from the services he/she is accessing. Data from the device of TOR user hops in the form of three relays to destination pushed up by volunteers. This makes it hard to locate the exact location of the source and destination.
Owners of Safeplug can also customize their device to act as another relay in order to help others using TOR. Presently, TOR offers around 4K relays and in a couple of years plans to extend the count to 10K.
So, use Safeplug and make your online activity anonymous and isolated from NSA Prism.
