Google funds an auto-update for Vidalia

I have tried to set up TOR and it reportedly did not work so simplifying it would be a good idea. But 19/04/2010 in Australia a show called 4 corners had a very good story about the allegations of China using spy and tracking software and worms as well as other methods to obtain information from businesses and Government agencies alike in the wake of Rio Tinto. The allegations were very serious and concerning not just for business but for individuals going there for holidays. I had been in China 3 times and on my first visit we stayed in a hotel for a week. My personal address book went missing from our room. I did not make a fuss over it but it was a concern as I was wondering who would be interested in obtaining this information as I was not a person whom would be considered to be in possession of any secrets or information that would not be available to any police or government agency. How ever it did spoil a wonderful holiday and it happened at the end of our stay. I did not even tell my wife and she is Chinese. Surprisingly Google was one of the first companies to report their suspicion about the hack attacks and spy ware coming from China. I know Google keeps a record of browsing histories and other information when we use it. I have done some I.T courses for networking and the teachers were quick to point this out. Nothing on the internet is secret all we can do is try to minimize the effects we may suffer and hope we have not been compromised so as to loose our bank account details and other information we may consider precious. The problem is that it can get a lot more serious including black mail and extortion as well as trying to set up individuals with criminal offenses and coerce them into situations that would have them compromise their employers and spy on them. But this is not necessary these days as a lot more information can be obtained from servers that have a large data base on a very large number of people and companies. The security requirements and I.T. knowledge for 90% of the individuals are probably not reachable and even corporate basic trained PC users would struggle as it is advisable to remove your phone (like blueberry) batteries before going to meetings.The show forgot to mention that blue tooth technology can also be used to hack into mobiles from any location as long as an connection can be established ( there are programs that can be purchased or obtained to hack into mobiles from mobiles). Not sure if newer mobiles have had the security upgraded to prevent this. So is this Google funding proposal a concern? Yes, but only if it is an attempt by Google to misuse the Tor service. But I am sure they would be able to work around the tor program if they really wanted to anyway. Perhaps they are trying to get better security for anonymous surfing and get some one else to help with the program as they now fear the outcome if their data bases are compromised. Not only that there are a lot of people using Tor programs for corporate , personal and other reasons. If the crims or agents are using similar programs there are commercial options available. And Tor would not be my choice if I had millions of dollars to spend or had a multi million dollar empire or even worked for any organization that had professional I.T. People and security infrastructure in place. And if you fear the federal agencies or state police spying on you, well you are very silly as they have ways of penetrating and obtaining most of our details it would be a matter of time and most of us would get busted within minutes. Now I.T. Teachers consider hackers as good guys as they help expose vulnerabilities that certain Operating Systems have in Particular M S Windows as it is most widely used. And most of the people using computers use Microsoft products.. Privacy legislations are just a snow ball effect to give us a false sense of security, as in reality privacy is something we are told we are legally entitled to but these days with so many data bases around the globe such as Police, Government, Health, ISP, Business, to mention a few. Unless you are from a very distant remote and backward place your details can be purchased or discovered/ revealed and you are going to have to be a ghost to remain anonymous. Mobile telephones can be tracked by satellite and conversations can be listened in on. Bugging by organizations could be done from exchanges decades ago these days it would probably be a lot easier with new technological advances and gizmos. The old dial up INTERNET service was a lot more secure than Networked computers. Hiding your IP address or masking it may protect you from some but it is no guarantee and I dare guess it will not keep you safe for long if someone who is trained in security network hacking and has the resources to get to you. I am told by some that this is impossible unless your computer is compromised and that the spy or villain would have to have access to your machine. Well I some how believe that this may not be 100% true as your machine may have been compromised within minutes of your Initial Internet access. And this was confirmed by some Networking teachers I had. The safest option is to keep a separate NON Network PC with all your personal files and use a network PC for the transfer of the information you need to be exchanged and for browsing. But you still run the risk of infecting the non Internet PC when you transfer files to it as certain viruses and malware needs to have continuous Security updates to have protection against the new viruses or add ware and spy ware. So your computer may suffer a sudden glitch so you would have to have a back up. Sounds like a catch 22. The biggest problem seems to be the ports that can be accessed and are open when the Operating system is written. I would like to say that Microsoft is the easiest to get into but that may not be true as I have had connections from servers using ubuntu on ports that were alien to me as I discovered that communications for updates and other reasons were what I assume placed on the OS by design but at least the tools were available to back track these as standard network tools on the OS. Where with MS products it is not that easy if you don't know how to do it and there are a lot more trained people that can hack into MS products than Linux. This is my assumption judged by the most widely used for training and other uses. So if browser security is your main concern I'd be inclined to user the least popular one or the least known one but then you may find that this may also have draw backs as if ti is open source there may be spy ware or glitches already programmed into it or vulnerabilities that were not intentionally placed on it. This would leave you at a higher risk from those that can exploit this unless you are an expert programmer and check the browser code before you start to use it and maintain the security of this personsly. But how clever and trained is the average PC user?