Ars recently reviewed two "Tor routers", devices that are supposed to improve your privacy by routing all traffic through the Tor anonymity network. Although the initial release of Anonabox proved woefully insecure, the basic premise itself is flawed. Using these instead of the Tor Browser Bundle is bad: less secure and less private than simply not using these "Tor Routers" in the first place. They are, in a word, EPICFAIL.
There are four possible spies on your traffic when you use these Tor "routers", those who can both see what you do and potentially attack your communication: your ISP, the websites themselves, the Tor exit routers, and the NSA with its 5EYES buddies.
Now it's true that these devices do protect you against your ISP. And if your ISP wants to extort over $30 per month for them to not spy on you, this does offer protection. But if you want protection from your ISP, just use a VPN service or run your own VPN using Amazon EC2 ($9.50/month plus $.09/GB bandwidth for a t2 micro instance). These services offer much better performance and equal privacy. At the same time, if your ISP wants to extort your privacy, choose a different ISP.
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