Anonabox works to avoid censorship and mass surveillance

Oct 14, 2014 08:34 GMT  ·  By

It’s all about anonymity these days and it does seem like the trend is simply going to continue until the end of time since people’s right to privacy may only be protected through extreme measures as long as intelligence agencies have the power and free hand to spy on everyone.

Well, the Anonabox, a device that’s seeking funding via Kickstarter, will help give you the ultimate privacy levels by routing all your Internet traffic through TOR without bothering you with setting things up on your own.

The $45 (€35.4) open-source routers directs all data connecting to it by Ethernet or Wi-Fi through the Tor network, effectively hiding the user’s IP address and avoiding censorship. Right now, those who want to use the Tor network have to go through a rather difficult setup process and to tweak software, which isn’t something that everyone can do.

Anonymity and privacy, however, should reach everyone in the world, even those that aren’t that tech savvy. The idea came from the desire to help out the people that were getting cut out from major sites during the Arab spring uprisings when Internet access was being censored.

It took some four years, but the team managed to put together a device that’s small enough to easily conceal, have quality components and is rock solid. “By our fourth round of prototypes we had created a model with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU. This not only runs the software well, it flies! At last happy with the board, we designed a simple, minimalist case in plain white to house it. The end result is our current model. We decided to name it the anonabox,” reads the message.

The anonabox has been developed for the sole purpose of running the open source software Tor, which is considered to be the best and most secure way to access the Internet anonymously.

Anonymize yourself via Tor

“Using the anonabox hides your location, as well as all the other personal data that leaks through ordinary Internet use. We noticed also that pageload times and end user experience is significantly faster than when using the Tor browser bundle software, because all the hard work is being done in the background by the anonabox,” the presentation reads.

The device encrypts Internet usage, secures web traffic and allows people to use a wider range of software that wasn’t previously available for Tor users, like Skype, Safari and Filezilla.

“No more backdoors! The anonabox provides better security than most available products because it is completely open source, and open hardware. Anyone can audit and browse the code, or download hardware schematics. For this reason, it is guaranteed to be free from the documented back-doors and security flaws common to other commercially available routers. We welcome developers from around the world to create their own uses for the anonabox. We believe the device belongs to them and they are free to modify it any way they like,” the team writes.

Although the project was only opened on November 12, 2014 and has 28 days left to go, and the goal was to get $7,500 (€5,905), over 3,000 backers have already pledged $190,449 (€150,000) for the project.

People can pledge anything between $1 (€0.78) and $1,337 (€1,052) or more, but it’s from $45 (€35.4) and up that you get the anonabox, with an estimated delivery date in January 2015. Shipping outside the US costs $15 (€11.8).