Tallow is a small program that redirects all outbound traffic from a Windows machine via the Tor anonymity network. Any traffic that cannot be handled by Tor, e.g. UDP, is blocked. Tallow also intercepts and handles DNS requests preventing potential leaks.
Tallow has several applications, including:
- "Tor-ifying" applications there were never designed to use Tor
- Filter circumvention -- if you wish to bypass a local filter and are not so concerned about anonymity
- Better-than-nothing-Tor -- Some Tor may be better than no Tor.
Note that, by itself, Tallow is not designed to be a complete strong anonymity solution. See the warnings below.
Using the Tallow GUI, simply press the big "Tor" button to start redirecting traffic via the Tor network. Press the button again to stop Tor redirection. Note that your Internet connection may be temporarily interrupted each time you toggle the button.
To test if Tor redirection is working, please visit the following site: https://check.torproject.org.
Tallow was derived from the TorWall prototype (where "tallow" is an anagram of "torwall" minus the 'r').
Tallow works slightly differently, and aims to redirect all traffic rather than just HTTP port 80. Also, unlike the prototype, Tallow does not use Privoxy nor does it alter the content of any TCP streams in any way (see warnings below).
To build Tallow you need the MinGW cross-compiler for Linux.
You also need to download and place the following external dependencies and place them in the contrib/ directory:
- WinDivert-1.1.5-MINGW.zip.
- The following files extracted from the
Tor Expert Bundle:
- tor.exe
Then simply run the build.sh script.
Tallow is beta quality software. There may be bugs.
Currently Tallow makes no attempt to anonymize the content of traffic sent through the Tor network. This information may be used to de-anonymize you. See this link for more information. Tallow should not be relied on for strong anonymity unless you know what you are doing.