The Number of TOR Users Has Doubled Since Snowden's NSA Leak

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I have been telling people to use TOR to protect their browsing privacy since SOPA and PIPA started snaking their way through Congress, but people didn't really get the gravity of online privacy, and government abuse until Edward Snowden spilled the beans about the NSA's PRISM program.

Now apparently the TOR Project has seen the usage of TOR in the United States double!

From RT:

Internet users throughout the world have signed up in droves for anonymity software that allows them to live and interact online without international governments being able to monitor their activity.

The Tor Project reported that the number of people subscribed to its service has doubled since June, when former National Security agency contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed that United States intelligence analysts were secretly tracking global internet activity. Short for “The Onion Project,” which implies of layers anonymity, Tor conceals a computer’s location and relays an individual’s messages, search queries, and other functions through a series of encryptions.

While the numbers have not been directly attributed to the NSA leak, the number of Americans using Tor jumped 75 percent between June 1, just days before the Snowden leak, and August 27, 2013. US citizens now make up 17.54 percent of the daily Tor traffic, making Americans the only nationality to surpass 10 percent of the networks’ user base. 

Like I said before, I'm a huge proponent of online anonymity, and have even put TOR on Bauer-Puntu Linux by default to help keep "the man" out of your business.

Do you use TOR? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

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