In the post-Snowden revelation era, many institutions, including the UN and the EU, remember that the only way that people have to protect themselves from mass surveillance is through the use of autonomous tools to protect our communications. It is only the use that is made of them that can be considered criminal. Making use of a particular tool can never be a crime in itself. It is important that legal doctrines that blame the tools for the crimes are not established.
She further wrote, ” Countries like Egypt and Venezuela have tightened restrictions on free expression and accessing the open web companies like Google and Amazon are mishandling people’s data and growing the surveillance economy, and some nations are even shutting off the internet completely to quell possible dissidence.Everything explained in this guide is to protect the inviolability of our communications, our right to privacy and freedom of political opinion, expression and access to information, all of them fundamental rights that have been legally recognized for centuries. Tor Foundation’s fundraising director wrote in a blog post, “The Tor Project has a bold mission: to take a stand against invasive and restrictive online practices and bring privacy and freedom to internet users around the world. As the data passes through many servers before returning to a user, it might slow down the speed at which content is delivered to a user. The data after having passed through many servers get encrypted and returned to the user. It does this by routing incoming data to other servers. Tor works by hiding users’ identities from network surveillance. With net neutrality buried, internet providers can charge gigantic fees and throttle internet speeds, if a user is using one of its competitor’s product. Moreover, since the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Ajit Pai decided to cut net neutrality, users’ privacy and freedom are in even more danger. Russian hackers, spam accounts, advertisement trackers and security agencies are just some of the forces of evil that users need to be vary of. In today’s day and age, it is extremely essential to protect oneself online. Tor also pushed to integrate its browser into Firefox.
In the same month, Tor released its most stable browser update called Tor Browser 8.0.
2018 has been another big year for Tor as it released the alpha version of its browser for Android devices in September. Dingledine believes in order to improve the figures even further, the company has “more work to do.”Īlso Read: Ghostery released a new version of its mobile browserīetween to Tor raised $205,874 from the public. Tor’s President and Research Director Roger Dingledine stated the company still has a long to way go. In contrast, 2015 was the best year for Tor in terms of money. Tor managed to raise just $0.8 million in 2014. The company had received $3.3 million in 2015, which was the highest amount of money raised by Tor, but 86% of this cost was due to government grants. The nonprofit began crowdfunding campaigns in 2015. Tor could no longer rely on such governments to cover its expenses.
Tor had to crowdfund its operations since governments were becoming more greedy, and afraid of providing privacy to its citizens. This sum might not be much for a small startup, as it equals a small seed round, but it meant the world for Tor. This was achieved because of Mozilla’s constant support.
According to Tor, its user base is around two million individuals.Ī campaign was run last year which helped Tor reach $400,000 in donations. Mozilla will match an individual’s donation, meaning Tor will instantly receive double its donations.īoth Tor and Mozilla are huge advocates of online privacy, freedom for all, and above all providing their services to the public for free. Tor just announced its fight for online privacy by running its annual end of the year fundraiser. Mozilla, the organization behind the popular web browser Firefox is backing Tor in its fight for user privacy.