Today, its absolutely normal for you to see an ad on your phone for something that you've searched on your desktop. The degree of digital tracking going on here is borderline nefarious. Most of this tracking is done to understand us better, to serve us better ads.
Advertisement is necessary for the web to remain free, financially. But still, someone else having so much information about you, watching you tracking your every move on the web can be terrifying.
Then there are things like hacking, identity theft, online harassment, cyberstalking, invasion of privacy, cyber fraud, scams, malware, ransomware and many other things, which force us to be vigilant.
While you can use things like VPN or a security browser extension, there is an ultimate cybersecurity solution that will put pretty much off the grid. Even Edward Snowden himself used this operating system to protect himself during his whistleblowing operations.
Introducing The Amnesic Incognito Live System Or TAILS
Tails is an operating system built for the express purpose of stay anonymous on the web. It a portable system that comes with an advanced featured like TOR to leave zero footprints on the web.
Privacy-Centric OS And How Awesome It Is At Keeping You Anonymous
Tails is a Debian based Linux distro and feature a modified Gnome desktop environment. The interface is very simple. While Tails is a special-purpose operating system, you don't need to learn anything extra to use in fact everything is straightforward in Tails.
Tails come with many advanced security features and tor been the main. All the internet traffic on tails is routed through the tor circuit.
What exactly is Tor you ask?
Traditionally, on your normal computer and smartphone when you open a website your internet service provider or ISP connects your computer to that website. Now you see your ISP and the website you are connected to know who you are in terms of your IP address and might have access to information such as your approximate location.
Virtual Private Network is a popular solution to tackle this issue. These Vpn act as a middleman between you and the website you visit and they also hide you from your isp and the website you visit to a certain extent by hiding your real Ip address. But now the VPN you are using has access to that data. You've hidden your data from some people only to expose it to others.
Tor on the other hand is something else entirely. First of all, it's not one entity, not a company rather it's a community of privacy-conscious people. With Tor you don't connect to the website directly instead you connect to a random tor node, which connects to another random tor node then finally connects to the website you wanted to visit. There is no possible way for the website to get your location or track you because as far as that website is concerned, its the last tor node which is visiting the website.
Your ISP cannot track you because they can only see you connecting to some IP somewhere. They don't know the full and becomes particularly useful when you're public wifi, where even the wifi owner can potentially see what you're doing on the internet.
And all the data sent on Tor is always encrypted, so it's gibberish to anybody trying to listen to your data stream.
Features Of Tails Os
Tor Browser; Privacy Is Free
Tails use the Tor browser. This an ultra-secure browse which does not allow any website to store cookies or trackers on your computer. This is enforced with extreme prejudice so the website cannot track you in any way whatsoever.
Amnesia; New System With Every Restart
Tails is an Os that you run entirely out of a USB Stick. You do not install anything to the hard disk, nor does tails save any data across reboots. Once you shut down Tails System, any data in that system is gone permanently.
Nobody knows your Ip, your location, there's no digital footprint and your digital identity, even if any exist it completely gone when you turn off your computer.
This makes Tails the best way to use public computers and machines that are not yours.
Tails have a strict Tor for everything Protocol. Any application that needs to connect to the internet must do so over the tor network only.
Tails does not allow any application to bypass that and connect to the internet directly. This makes sure that even any additional applications that you might install will not leak any data about you.
Tails Optimized Performance
Tails is optimized to run on a wide variety of hardware, that too completely from a USB stick. The performance is very good and the system is very responsive and nimble.
Tails Installation
Tails are quite easy to setup. this will be the requirement needed to install tails
Then plug in your Pendrive, right-click on the downloaded file, Open with disk Image writer select the Pendrive and go.
You can check the full installation process -- here
How And When Should You Use Tails?
first of all, Tails is not meant to replace your main operating system. You cannot use it as your main system.it a specialized operating system whose primary objective is to protect your identity online. Tails is not for gaming, not for media production, not for office use and definitely not for everyday home use.
Use it as an additional security module.
If you use a public computer then use tails as public computers tend to be more vulnerable.
If you use public wifi it's a good idea to use tails instead of your default system as the owner of the wifi can snoop on your device
Are you working with sensitive information?
Tails also enable you to bypass government censorships and firewalls that restrict or monitor your internet traffic. this makes tails very suitable for journalist and people like Edward Snowden.
Also, I want to make it clear that using tails cannot make you absolutely invisible.
example if you log in to a website using your credentials, it doesn't make a difference if you are using tails or not.
Most website today use cookies to work properly and as we know cookies, trackers and all persistent data is eliminated on tails by default, so some website might not work.
The routing is awesome