Remove Censorship & Browse Anonymously With Xerobank

image“Reclaim your Privacy!”

That is the claim of Xerobank, yet another group of software developers amongst the increasingly competitive world of web browsers. Firefox is now taking on close to 20% of the browsing market, Internet Explorer has 70% or so and Opera and Safari squabble over the rest.

XeroBank browser “is the most popular anonymous web browser in the world” according to the developers, and could be true. I’m Just not sure of too many other browsers competing in that space.

image

What does it do?

XeroBank uses two anonymity networks, Tor and XeroBank, to ensure completely anonymous browsing with secure and encrypted connections.

This anonymous browsing uses a technology called onion-routing which makes tracking a user next to impossible. Tor is available as a standalone download for computers, but it’s worth noting that it needs to be set up correctly to provide real anonymity, something XeroBank does automatically.

Onion routing encrypts messages and data in various layers and sends it through unpredictable paths routed between various servers. It’s not untraceable, but to do so someone would need the ability to monitor every router in the network, which would be next to impossible.

Portability

I wouldn’t personally be interested in using XeroBank on a regular basis as it’s lacking in normal browser features that most modern browsers like Firefox and Opera contains. The biggest advantage is that it can installed on portable devices like a thumb drive and used anywhere you may be worried about network restrictions.

For example using this browser should enable you to get around censoring issues on a campus network or anywhere with wireless access. All data produced by the browser is completely wiped upon removing the drive so it’s very secure.

XeroBank is developed for Windows and runs under Wine. It’s free and open source and came out of development of a portable, anonymous version of Firefox a couple of years ago.

Browzar

Of course you don’t have to be stuck with just one solution, Browzar is another anonymous browser (still in beta) based on the Internet Explorer engine. It’s pretty basic when compared to XeroBank and really just puts a few restrictions on IE to not gather cookies, auto-complete, web history or cache sites.

What tips do you have for keeping your privacy online, or getting around network restrictions?

(By) Laurence John was born naked, screaming and utterly helpless at some point in the last century. He currently blogs about heroic failures and the development of Windows 7.

Tagged: • • • •

Laurence John

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  • http://www.howtogeek.com The How-To Geek

    Isn’t Browzar the fake browser that was full of adware?

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/01/is-browzar-just-an-adware-machine/

  • K

    Would this work at, say, a high school, where certain websites are blocked? Would it help you to get around the restrictions and view those websites?

    • LaurenceJohn

      I still have to try it on my uni network when I go back… but I’m hoping yes it does. That’s the impression the developers give of Xerobank.

  • Krasen

    You may whish to try OperaTor

    http://archetwist.com/en/opera/operator/

    OperaTor is a portable software bundle which allows you to browse the web anonymously. It combines the power of the Opera Browser, Tor and Privoxy.

    With OperaTor no data will be stored at the computer you plugged your portable memory into.

  • http://shreela.wordpress.com Shreela

    I tried XeroBank before I upgraded to FF3, and it wouldn’t go past the Connecting to Tor phase — I thought maybe since I already had Tor/Vidalia running silently for the occasions I wanted to use it in FF, it left some sort of driver running all the time like Peer Guardian.

    I didn’t set up Tor/Vidalia for FF3, so when this article mentioned XB, I tried loading it again, but it still wouldn’t go past the Connecting to Tor. AND, it won’t close out when it’s in that frigging loop, unless I Ctrl+Alt+Del it.

    So maybe it’s not connecting because I installed it as admin, but am now trying to run it as a user (not really good at admin vs user stuff sometimes). So I had the bright idea to run XB as admin. Well it’s still not connecting, and I double-checked task manager to make sure I forgot to turn off regular Tor running at Startup (I didn’t).

    But now since I’m ‘trying’ to run XB as admin, I can’t use Task Manager to close out XB’s looping, because I’m just a user. Oh well, I could use a restart anyway.

    • RS

      I was not able to get past the “connecting to tor” screen either and after it attempted to do so for 2 mins it crashed with a memory violation!!

      Anybody else managed to use this?

  • someone

    My xB Browser (v 2.0.0.16a) is stuck at the “connecting to tor” screen, for ever, either.

  • someone else

    so is mine…

  • Steve

    Comment from xB Browser team

    There is a correction you should note on Make Use Of. We investigated
    Browzar, as linked in your article here:

    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/remove-censorship-and-browse-anonymously-with-xerobank/

    The problem is that Browzar is not actually an anonymous browser, but
    a skin file for Internet Explorer, and does not provide any anonymity,
    and only tells IE to turn of the cache and history.

    It may please you to note that xB Browser is downloaded over 150k times
    per month, and has topped 9 million downloads to date.

    Thanks again. And let us know if we can be of any assistance.