Jacob Appelbaum is a computer security consultant and developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a tool and privacy network which protects internet users’ privacy and security. At the Arab Bloggers Workshop he gave a presentation about circumvention, online security, and anonymity. He is @ioerror on Twitter.

Appelbaum explained how Tor works with a presentation which clearly illustrated a Tor bridge (to find out more info on Tor, see here), as well as what kind of information Tor tracks, and the history of the Tor project. During the workshop, participants live-tweeted information from the presentation.

weddady noted the lack of safety in some proxies:

weddady quotes Jacob Appelbaum

Appelbaum explained further that with proxies, one never actually knows who is running the proxy, thus creating a potential risk of surveillance.

Amira Al Hussaini noted on Twitter that Tor is not widely used in the Middle East, and relays Appelbaum’s call for users:

Amira Al Hussaini attended Jacob Appelbaum's presentation on Tor

Tor can be downloaded here, and more information can be found here.