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ANONYMEBOX<br />
Review<br />
anonymebox.com<br />
£75/$115<br />
Maker<br />
Says<br />
An easy<br />
solution to<br />
anonymise<br />
you online<br />
pi3g<br />
ANONYMEBOX<br />
With our every online move being monitored, can a Raspberry Pi-based<br />
appliance keep you and your family safe online? Les Pounder investigates…<br />
Image courtesy of Adafruit.com<br />
Related<br />
ONION PI<br />
It launched the<br />
Tor appliance<br />
trend, but is<br />
designed for the<br />
more technically<br />
minded of us<br />
comfortable<br />
working in<br />
the terminal.<br />
$85<br />
adafruit.com<br />
S<br />
ince George Orwell<br />
wrote 1984, the fiction<br />
contained therein has<br />
become fact in our society. Big<br />
Brother is indeed watching you.<br />
Your ISP can throttle your speed<br />
and governments can get hold<br />
of your browser history. One of<br />
the tools enabling anyone to stay<br />
anonymous online is Tor (The<br />
Onion Router), which provides a<br />
series of relays that bounce your<br />
connection around the world<br />
via an encrypted network. Tor is<br />
configured per machine, so the<br />
Anonymebox’s differing approach<br />
is more convenient.<br />
Tor made easy<br />
The Pi-powered Anonymebox<br />
connects to your home network so<br />
anyone can connect securely with<br />
any computer. It comes with an<br />
Ethernet cable to connect to your<br />
router, a Wi-Fi dongle and a USBto-Ethernet<br />
adaptor. Building<br />
the Anonymebox is very easy too:<br />
insert the SD card containing the<br />
OS, connect the Ethernet cable to<br />
your router and then insert the<br />
Wi-Fi dongle before powering up.<br />
Easy configuration<br />
Once it’s on, it can be configured<br />
via the browser of any device<br />
connected to your router. The<br />
web interface is sparse, with just<br />
an overview showing the devices<br />
connected to the Anonymebox,<br />
and a settings menu to change the<br />
admin password and configure<br />
the access point details. Your<br />
first post-setup activity involves<br />
updating the default password and,<br />
optionally, changing the default<br />
name of the access point.<br />
Connecting to it over Wi-Fi is the<br />
same as connecting to any other<br />
router, but the Anonymebox will<br />
completely anonymise your online<br />
presence via Tor. Visiting a site<br />
such as whatismyipaddress.com<br />
will show that your location is in a<br />
completely different country.<br />
Tor needs to be regularly<br />
updated to ensure protection,<br />
so the developer has created an<br />
easy-to-use method for updating.<br />
Just download an archive from its<br />
website, copy it to a USB flash drive<br />
and insert that into the spare port<br />
on your Anonymebox. The software<br />
is configured to act if an update<br />
is found. The Anonymebox is<br />
genuinely user-friendly, requiring<br />
little or no technical expertise to<br />
set up or use.<br />
For those wanting to create<br />
their own Anonymebox, there’s<br />
even a free download of the OS<br />
available from the website, along<br />
with instructions on which Wi-Fi<br />
dongle to purchase.<br />
Last word<br />
The Anonymebox is a good tool<br />
for those who don’t have the<br />
skills to configure Tor on every<br />
machine they use, though its<br />
ease belies its true power.<br />
raspberrypi.org/magpi March 2015<br />
61
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