By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Tor, sponsored by the EFF, and Google’s new beta VPN are both aimed at those of us who want to protect our privacy and rights online. While Google claims that its VPN program is to boost security on wireless networks, it can also be used with wired internet connections to add some more security for the rest of us. Tor, on the other hand, does not use a VPN but instead its own program which acts essentially like a VPN with a few exceptions. One of the nice features of the Tor network is that instead of connecting two only one server it connects to one server which then connects to another server (and so on) and forms a chain of encrypted traffic. Each hop also has a unique key, so that makes it incredibly difficult to track where information is going. That’s not to say that Google’s VPN isn’t secure. It’s more like saying that the people who made Tor are insanely paranoid.

Other key differences are the nature of the forces behind each program. The EFF does not in any way have access to your surfing data while Google specifically says that it will store (and possibly sell) information about your surfing behavior though they also say that they strip this data of anything personally identifiable. Something that is interesting to note here is that the Google VPN is centralized while Tor is not. That means that it would be easier to find information out from Google than it would from the Tor network (by many degrees of magnitude). Also, since Google is a commercial company it will most likely comply with requests made by the government or organization like the RIAA or MPAA to track the identity (or at least the IP and/or MAC address) of certain users. For these reasons, the Tor network is inherently more secure and anonymous than Google’s VPN. Google’s VPN is, however, anonymous for the most part unless you start doing things online which will get you noticed by said organizations.

Read more below to find out what kind of effect these applications have on the speed of your browsing and downloading and some final thoughts.

I was a great guinea pig for testing the speed of these different applications because the internet connection at my college is incredibly fast and will generally max out any server I connect to. These are the results I found using the speed test from SpeakEasy. I made sure to disable or turn off any programs that might be trying to access the internet other than my web browser for these tests:

First off are my default settings using no proxy or VPN. As you can see, it’s very fast:

Next are my results using the Google VPN. While the speed is significantly decreased, there is no discernible difference in moderate to heavy web browsing:

Finally, my results using Tor. I’ll tell you right now, though, they are very disappointing. More on that after:

It is also important to note that Tor servers are not necessarily in the United States, so websites that automatically detect which country you are in (like the Google search engine) may not function as you’d like. It’s an annoyance, but generally not the end of the world:

In my view, the Google VPN clearly wins hands-down between the two for ease of use and speed, though it can’t touch Tor’s anonymity. I would probably forgo both of them, however, in place of good firewall protection and well-configured browsers. The added anonymity of the Google VPN is not worth it in my opinion and Tor is just too slow. Tor’s effect on web browsing is very noticeable. At some points it’s like using AOL dialup (yes, it can be that bad). If you are as paranoid as the people at the EFF are, however, Tor is awesome. Just make you configure all your applications to use it as they must each be manually added and configured (which is time consuming and often difficult). That said, if you’re using wireless networks frequently and just want a quick and easy way to improve your anonymity while browsing the web using WiFi, then the Google VPN might be right up your alley.

Check out Tor here and the Google VPN here though be sure to read Google’s privacy policy first to make sure you agree to it.