

Keeping the operating system on a disk means you’re operating independent of the computer, picking nothing up and leaving nothing behind. In exchange for all the troubleshooting, you get an unusual kind of anonymity. There are a few different stable setups, but lots of ways to accidentally break your own security. It ends up working best on machines that are Linux-friendly, without anything like a high-powered video card to trip things up. We spent the better part of a day trying to launch it on a Toshiba Kirabook, only to have Windows 8 punch through every time. There’s a long list of computers that can’t run the OS, and it includes most of the computers made by Apple. Getting Tails onto a computer isn’t straightforward either. There are lots of ways to accidentally break your own security In the era of the NSA, that’s a rare thing. But if you need a secure line, Tails is the best way to get it. Those are surprisingly high numbers for a project that’s this hard to use, and does this little. Nearly 8,500 computers booted up with Tails on a given day in March, 500 more than the month before.
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It’s already standard software at Glenn Greenwald’s First Look Media, where he’s called it “vital to my ability to work securely on the NSA story.” Tor researcher Jacob Appelbaum praised the project onstage at this year's Chaos Communications Congress, and in March Tails received a $50,000 grant to keep the project going. That trick has earned Tails a lot of attention. It's the digital equivalent of buying a new computer for a single session and tossing it into the river once you're done. There are no save files, no new programs, and most importantly, it becomes a blank slate the moment you shut down. It's an amnesiac system, which means it's completely fresh every time you boot up. It's running Tails, an open-source operating system designed to leave as little trace as possible, launching version 1.0 today after more than five years of open development. With the right tools, a computer is an open book.

If anyone really wants to go after you, they can also make a direct attack, targeting malware to track your movements in the background.
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Persistent logins from Google and Facebook tie each site visit to your offline identity. Websites leave tracking cookies, following you from page to page and session to session, alongside the usual traces left by your IP address. From the moment you boot up, your computer leaves footprints.
