WTor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than six thousand relays, for concealing a user's location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace the Internet activity to the user. Tor's intended use is to protect the personal privacy of its users, as well as their freedom and ability to conduct confidential communication by keeping their Internet activities unmonitored.
WThe Tor Project, Inc. is a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson and five others. The Tor Project is primarily responsible for maintaining software for the Tor anonymity network.
WTails, or The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a security-focused Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity. All its incoming and outgoing connections are forced to go through Tor, and any non-anonymous connections are blocked. The system is designed to be booted as a live DVD or live USB, and will leave no digital footprint on the machine unless explicitly told to do so. It can also be run as a virtual machine, with some additional security risks. The Tor Project provided financial support for its development in the beginnings of the project, and continues to do so alongside numerous corporate and anonymous sponsors. Tails comes with UEFI Secure Boot.
WAnonym.OS was a Live CD operating system based on OpenBSD 3.8 with strong encryption and anonymization tools. The goal of the project was to provide secure, anonymous web browsing access to everyday users. The operating system was OpenBSD 3.8, although many packages have been added to facilitate its goal. It used Fluxbox as its window manager.
WRoger Dingledine is an American computer scientist known for having co-founded the Tor Project. A student of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering, Dingledine is also known by the pseudonym arma. As of December 2016, he continues in a leadership role with the Tor Project, as a project Leader, Director, and Research Director.
WOperation Onymous was an international law enforcement operation targeting darknet markets and other hidden services operating on the Tor network.
WOrbot is a free software Proxy server project to provide anonymity on the Internet for users of the Android operating system. It acts as an instance of the Tor network on such devices and allows traffic routing from a device's web browser, e-mail client, map program, etc., through the Tor network, providing anonymity for the user.
WRicochet or Ricochet IM is a free software, multi-platform, instant messaging software project originally developed by John Brooks and later adopted as the official instant messaging client project of the Invisible.im group. A goal of the Invisible.im group is to help people maintain privacy by developing a "metadata free" instant messaging client.
WShari Steele is a technologist, lawyer, and activist for digital freedom. She worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the legal director and then executive director, as well as at The Tor Project as the executive director.
WTor2web is a software project to allow Tor hidden services to be accessed from a standard browser without being connected to the Tor network. It was created by Aaron Swartz and Virgil Griffith.
WTorChat was a centralized client-server quasi-anonymous instant messenger based on Instantbird, that used Tor onion services as its underlying network. It provides cryptographically secure text messaging and file transfers. The characteristics of Tor's onion services ensure that all traffic between the clients is encrypted and that it is very difficult to tell who is communicating with whom and where a given client is physically located, but suffers from metadata leaks.
WVidalia is a cross-platform GUI for controlling Tor, built using Qt. It allows the user to start, stop or view the status of Tor, view, filter or search log messages, monitor bandwidth usage, and configure some aspects of Tor. Vidalia also makes it easier to contribute to the Tor network by optionally helping the user set up a Tor relay.
WZeroNet is a decentralized web-like network of peer-to-peer users, created by Tamas Kocsis in 2015. Programming for the network is based in Budapest, Hungary; is built in Python; and is fully open source. Instead of having an IP address, sites are identified by a public key. The private key allows the owner of a site to sign and publish changes, which propagate through the network. Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages. In addition to using bitcoin cryptography, ZeroNet uses trackers from the BitTorrent network to negotiate connections between peers. ZeroNet is not anonymous by default, but it supports routing traffic through the Tor network.