A Linux-based operating system distribution designed for anonymity and privacy
"Tails s a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship."
—Tails.net
Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, was released 23rd june, 2009. it is known as an amnesic operating system and is usually run from a USB stick. After booting, the OS operates entirely in memory. It's amnesic in that it does not by default save anything to the host system, although persistent storage can be enabled, allowing the user to save files to the USB drive. For internet communication, the TOR network is used to allow anonymous browsing.
It enables you to use any computer without leaving a trace on the system. Your browsing and use are completely anonymous and keeps whatever work you are engaged in private. Out of the box, Tails includes a selection of applications to work on sensitive documents and communicate securely. Everything in Tails is ready-to-use and has privacy-safe defaults.
Installation and use
Once you have downloaded a Tails ISO image, and burned it to a USB stick using your day-to-day OS, using the operating system is straightforward—simply boot the machine from the USB drive and lo! Tails is ready to use.
Tails is a 1.5 GB download and takes less than ½ hour to set up. It can be installed on any USB stick of 8 GB minimum, and works on most computers less than 10 years old. You can start again on the other operating system after you shut down Tails.
Additionally, you can install in Tails any other software available in Debian Linux. For me this is valuable, as it means I can install the Signal Messenger desktop software.
Safe but not magic
It uses the TOR network, the strongest and most popular network to protect from surveillance and censorship. The TOR protocol uses secure routing and effecively hides your IP address from snoops. This does not mean that you are totally invisible, though. A state noop might well know that you are using the TOR network, which may flag you as suspicious (see below). Any files you create may include metadata that might enable someone to subsequently identify you or where you're coming from (Again, see the quotation below for examples).
In addition, users of Tails are classed as suspicious by some agencies.
n 2014, Das Erste reported that the NSA's XKeyscore surveillance system sets threat definitions for people who search for Tails using a search engine or visit the Tails website¹. A comment in XKeyscore's source code calls Tails "a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums".
In the same year, Der Spiegel published slides from an internal National Security Agency presentation dating to June 2012, in which the NSA deemed Tails on its own as a "major threat" to its mission and in conjunction with other privacy tools as "catastrophic".
In 2017, the FBI used malicious code developed by Facebook, identifying sexual extortionist and Tails user Buster Hernandez through a zero-day vulnerability in the default video player. The exploit was never explained to or discovered by the Tails developers, but it is believed that the vulnerability was patched in a later release of Tails. Hernandez had eluded authorities for a long time; the FBI and Facebook had searched for him with no success, and resorted to developing the custom hacking tool. He was arrested in 2017, and in 2021 he was sentenced to 75 years in prison.28
—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_(operating_system)#Security_incidents
You don't have to worry about the computer having viruses or other malware because Tails runs independently from the other operating system and never uses the hard disk. But, Tails cannot always protect you if you install it
from a computer with malare or if you use it on a computer with malicious hardware, like keyloggers.
Who uses Tails?
Edard Snowden did and does. Journalists and activists working in countries where state-based censorship and spying and common. But really, anyone who values their privacy or who wants to remain anonymous online. If you're concerned about communications security or operational security you may wish to use it. I have used it myself in situations where I have been required to use someone else's computer; mostly because I want to leave no trace on their system. I don't use it on a daily basis as my personal system is set up to be both secure and private.
¹ So that's me on a list. I use
DuckDuckGo for search, not the spy engine Google, but did visit the website without a
VPN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_(operating_system)
$ xclip -o | wc -w
707