What is Tor?

Tor is an a network of servers that allows you to communicate over the Internet anonymously. For further information, visit the Tor site.

Why is Tor not enough?

Internet based interactions reveal information on many levels. Tor takes care of one of those levels. PWS takes care of ALL levels, in the restricted context of search, including HTTP-level information (usually addressed by Privoxy) and active components like flash, Javascript, and others (usually not addressed at all).

What is Privoxy?

Privoxy is an application that controls what information is revealed at a HTTP-level in Web connections. For further information, visit the Privoxy site.

Does it work only with Google?

Yes, but if things go as planned we will support other search engines in future releases.

Does it work only in English?

Yes.

Couldn't Google just block PWS?

Yes it could, but it has not done so yet.

How much of a performance degradation does using PWS entail?

In terms of user experience, queries using PWS will take longer that direct Google queries. This is because traffic routed through Tor is much slower than direct traffic. In terms of computational resources, not much. PWS has a thread maintaining Tor connections. This implies some low yet permanent network traffic. A few times a day, directory information is updated, downloading two 2Mb files from the Tor directory servers.

I installed PWS and now I see many TCP connections I did not initiate, what is the problem?

There is no problem, those connections have to do with how PWS works. PWS maintains a number of Tor connections open so that they are ready when needed. Keeping this connections requires very little resources and speeds up PWS in a significant way.