A Genuinely Secure Web Browser -- Free!

Recently I posted a blurb about Browzar, which claimed to provide a truly secure and private web browsing environment. Browzar was quickly revealed to be less than it claimed to be, alas, but good news was just around the corner: Torpark, an honest-to-God secure browser. How so? Read on.

Torpark is built to use the Tor service, which creates encrypted tunnels for your data via its network of servers. Tor servers are located all around the world, and Tor bounces your web requests through a sequence of servers, so the data path is difficult to trace. To add to security, the data is encrypted at every stage except for the initial transfer from the source of the data (which is not part of the Tor network), so even if your traffic is spied upon, its contents will be scrambled. As a final layer of security, the sequence of servers Tor uses to make connections changes every few minutes, making it next to impossible to track a Tor user online.

Tor has historically required a bundle of applications to run, and even then it's worked as a Firefox plug-in. Well, if you're serious about your web browsing security, now you can download and install a simple, all-in-one browser called Torpark (see link above). Torpark is a customized version of Firefox with Tor features built right in. Download and install (it's free, of course), and you're instantly browsing securely. Torpark can even run from a flash drive and leaves no traces of your browsing history on the computer where you run it.

I checked out Torpark for myself and it works completely as advertised. There's one little catch, however: Since your web traffic bounces through so many servers spread so far apart and running at who-knows-how-fast speeds, Torpark can slow down web browsing considerably. Fortunately, you can turn the Tor routing features off whenever you don't need Torpark's security enabled. Just click the little onion at the top of the screen to toggle Tor off and on. (With Tor off, your browsing speed returns to normal.)

Torpark is not for everyday browsing, but if you're, say, a Thai student trying to get the word out about the ongoing coup in your country, Torpark may be exactly what you need.