14 DAY TRIAL // Tails 1.1 RC1, a live system that aims to preserve your privacy and that helps you use the Internet anonymously, has been released for testing.
Tails is a distribution based on Debian and TOR technologies whose purpose is to keep its users as anonymous as possible. Even though Tails is not exactly a new distribution and has been around for quite some time, it has become a lot more popular after Edward Snowden said that he used it to hide his footprints when he delivered the documents to various media outlets.
Tails stands for The Amnesic Incognito Live System and aims to do exactly what you would expect, and that is to leave no trace of its users.
The developers say that “it helps you to use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship almost anywhere you go and on any computer but leaving no trace unless you ask it to explicitly.”
“It is a complete operating system designed to be used from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card independently of the computer's original operating system. It is Free Software and based on Debian GNU/Linux. Tails comes with several built-in applications pre-configured with security in mind: web browser, instant messaging client, email client, office suite, image and sound editor, etc.”
This is a new development release and numerous changes have been made. For example, the desktop user is no longer allowed to pass arguments to the tails-upgrade-frontend, the file permissions are now a lot safer, strict permissions are now set on /home/amnesia, the FoxyProxy's proxy:// protocol handler has been disabled, pinentry is now used as the GnuPG agent, some packages that had been installed by mistake have been removed, and an emergency shutdown that occurred when removing the boot device before login has been fixed.
Also, the support of persistent volumes created with Tails 1.0.1 and earlier has been enabled, the NetworkManager persistence setting is now automatically transitioned when upgrading from Squeeze to Wheezy, the Unsafe Web Browser startup in Windows camouflage mode has been fixed, and it's now possible to close error messages displayed by the persistent volume assistant.
A complete changelog can be found in the official announcement. You can download Tails 1.0.1 right now from Softpedia or you can try the new Tails 1.1 RC1, which has some very interesting new features.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.