Here’s my second post on how fiction writers can do research online without being tracked by the Man. Last time, I shared my favorite private search engines, but now it’s time for the biggest hammer in the toolbox: Tor.
I use Tor a lot. Tor is… well, give this a try:
The people at the Tor Project describe it like this: “Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.”
If you’ve heard of Tor at all, you probably heard that criminals use it. But actually, criminals don’t need Tor (because they’ve already hacked your wifi and stolen your identity, and surf the web masquerading as you). Tor is for non-criminals who need anonymity online, like thriller writers researching how to kill people. See “Media,” below? That’s you, writer!
The software itself is called the Tor Browser Bundle, a modified version of the Mozilla Firefox browser. You can download it for Windows or Mac (or for true badasses, Linux) right here.
There’s also Orbot and Orfox for your phone, so you can get your murder-and-mayhem research done on the road.
There’s not much learning curve to Tor. Just download and go. I’ll end this post with a scene from Sneakers that has nothing to do with Tor in any technical sense… except using Tor always reminds me of it:
“They got the satellite in Tokyo. These guys are good.”
Novel Dog 
[…] yet, get started with Tor if you haven’t […]