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Re: [tor-talk] Will Tor affect Internet Explorer? (newbie question)

Gabrielle DiFonzo writes:

> Okay. Now I'm officially confused.
> 
> If I download Tor, can't I run it as a separate program from IE? Can I run the two programs separately, like the proverbial ships in the night?
> 
> Can someone tell me exactly what it means to configure Tor through IE? Can't I configure it by itself and continue to use the two independently of each other?

You can have both on your computer, but unless you specifically
tell IE to send information through Tor, you won't be getting any
privacy benefits from Tor when you're using IE.  It doesn't
prevent you from using IE, but it doesn't improve or protect IE
either.

Although IE could be asked to send information through Tor, which
would then provide privacy benefits, people keep talking about the
Tor Browser because

â it's easier (you can just download the Tor Browser and run it,
and all that browsing activity with Tor Browser is automatically
protected by Tor)

â there are some technical problems in other browsers that mean
that the privacy benefits of using them with Tor are not as great
as we would like.  The Tor Browser developers have tried to think
about all of these issues and create a browser that's optimized
to work together with Tor to get the most privacy protection
possible.

The discussion of what's meant by "privacy benefits of using
them with Tor" and "most privacy protection possible" is pretty
involved, and mostly has to do with web sites actively trying
to figure out who you are and where you're connecting from, the
things that Tor is trying to conceal.

-- 
Seth Schoen  <schoen@xxxxxxx>
Senior Staff Technologist                       https://www.eff.org/
Electronic Frontier Foundation                  https://www.eff.org/join
815 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA  94109       +1 415 436 9333 x107
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