Tor. Good or hype?

**Barkester** · March 27th, 2014

I installed Tor and played a bit.Decided it wasn't for me and kinda forgot about it 'till now.

System monitor told me its using memory. Why would it be on at all?

So I checked the details and all I got was "You do not have permissions to read detailed memory information about this process (/proc/1576/smaps could not be read).

The main reason I left Windows was because it didn't feel I've the right to know whats happening in my own computer, so I uninstalled Tor.

Ubuntu always lets me look. Any idea what happened? How does the SU not have the right?

Near as I can tell it don't really work anyway. Cool idea though.

Anybody like and use it?

**open2reason** · March 27th, 2014

Barkester,
Questions and answers as to how Tor works and why it works in the way is does might be found at https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ where iirc you should find discussion on Ross William Ulbricht which may well point to sloppy trade craft on his part tripping him up rather than a fault with Tor. You might also consult the likes of http://www.reddit.com/r/TOR http://www.reddit.com/r/onions https://tor.stackexchange.com/ where people discus the function of Tor and best practices to adopt when using Tor.

As to you query about

System monitor told me its using memory. Why would it be on at all?

Could it be Tor house keeping, I have no idea, perhaps when you find the answer you could let me know?

For sneaking about and peeking on the net then I'm happy to use Tor and also happy to use Tor and Tails (Tails is part of the Tor project).

As with most thing research & question prior to adoption of software is often a good idea.

ATB