Tor for Technologists by Martin Fowler.
From the post:
Tor is a technology that is cropping up in news articles quite often nowadays. However, there exists a lot of misunderstanding about it. Even many technologists don’t see past its use for negative purposes, but Tor is much more than that. It is an important tool for democracy and freedom of speech – but it’s also something that is very useful in the day-to-day life of a technologist. Tor is also an interesting case study in how to design a system that has very specific security requirements.
The Internet is currently a quite hostile place. There are threats of all kinds, ranging from script kiddies and drive-by phishing attacks to pervasive dragnet surveillance by many of the major intelligence services in the world. The extent of these problems have only recently become clear to us. In this context, a tool like Tor fills a very important niche. You could argue that it’s a sign of the times that even a company like Facebook encourages the use of Tor to access their services. The time is right to add Tor to your tool belt.
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Martin does a great job of summarizing Tor and giving a overview of what Tor does and does not do. Both are important for security conscious users (that should include you).
If you aren’t already using Tor and are a technologist, read Martin’s introduction first and then become an active user/supporter of Tor.