My audience in this case refers to you reading this blog post about the Tor browser. In this post, I want to break down some terms that were difficult for me to understand when I joined the project newly and this is me putting myself in your shoes.
What is Tor Browser?
TorBrowser is often used to access censored content, and because of that some countries or network operators block access to the downloads in torproject.org. A mechanism we have to avoid those blocks is GetTor:gettor browser. The Tor Browser is a free open-source internet anonymity tool created as a response to online censorship. By sending your data through a network of volunteer servers, it hides your IP from the destination server and hides the destination server IP from your ISP. As a result, the Tor browser is a great tool to unblock sites.
What is a censor?
According to vocabulary.com, To "censor" is to review something and to choose to remove or hide parts of it that are considered unacceptable. Censorship is the name for the process or idea of keeping things like obscene words or graphic images from an audience. There is also such a thing as self-censorship, which is when you refrain from saying certain things — or possibly re-wording them — depending on who is listening. Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as Wikipedia.org) but exceptionally may extend to all Internet resources located outside the jurisdiction of the censoring state.
Censored content can be measured using OONI (Open Observatory of Network Interference). You can install the OONI Probe on a mobile device or desktop.
What I am contributing to
My team [#tor-anticensorship] works to extend GetTor to distribute TorBrowser on other IM and social media (like Twitter, iMessage, or WhatsApp). My first task included extending Gettor either on WhatsApp or on Twitter. I choose WhatsApp cause I am from Nigeria and here we have a lot of demography using Whatsapp cause of its simplicity. Currently, I created a dummy WhatsApp bot which will be used to extend gettor to share links over WhatsApp.
Here are once again some of the key terms you should be familiar with:
Censorship: The act of suppressing or prohibiting the free expression of ideas, thoughts, or information. In the context of the Tor browser, censorship can refer to the efforts of governments or other organizations to block access to certain websites or restrict the ability of users to communicate freely online.
Anonymity: The state of being unidentified or unknown. In the context of the Tor browser, anonymity refers to the ability of users to protect their online identity and activities from being traced or monitored.
Encryption: The process of converting data into a form that is unreadable without a special key or password. Encryption is used to protect the privacy and security of online communications, including those made through the Tor browser.
Onion routing: A technique for anonymous communication over a computer network, in which messages are passed through multiple layers of encryption to hide the identity of the sender and recipient. Onion routing is used by the Tor network to protect the privacy of its users.
Exit node: A computer on the Tor network that forwards traffic from the network to the regular Internet. Exit nodes play a critical role in the anonymity of the Tor network, as they are the last point at which the traffic is encrypted and can be traced back to the user.
Conclusion
By understanding these terms and concepts, you will be better equipped to navigate the technical challenges of working on the Tor browser and contribute to the development of a powerful tool for online privacy and freedom of expression.
PS: Kindly drop a comment in the comment box if you need clarification on anything relating to the Tor browser.
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