Tor should protect you from your local network, if that's what you're worried about.

The problem with Tor is the exit node (whose traffic could be sniffed) but that's hard to predict or manipulate (unless you're the NSA). If you're using SSL over Tor, that's even better.

Personally, I'd opt to just SSH to a server of mine and use its OpenSSH's built in SOCKS proxy.

ssh -D 9090 user@server

Then you can set your browser's proxy (remember it has to be a SOCKS proxy, not HTTP - that won't work) to localhost:9090 and boom, your traffic is fully encrypted all the way out to the server.

• Pro: To your local network it'll also look like standard encrypted SSH traffic. Much less suspicious than Tor traffic.


• Pro: It should be faster. There's less of the deliberate snaking that Tor encourages and server bandwidth is usually pretty great. This should keep things buzzing along.


• Meh: The endpoint (where you server sits) is still vulnerable but if it's yours, you should know the network more than you'll know the network of a Tor node.


• Con: It's not anonymous. Your server? Your IP. Not yours? Keeps a log of you connecting.