Kickstarter has suspended the Anonabox campaign, which offers users privacy by encrypting all of their data through the Tor service.
Kickstarter has not given the reason for the suspension; however, it appears as though the project did not meet Kickstarter's requirements to be "honest and clearly presented."
"A review of the project uncovered evidence that it broke Kickstarter's rules," said the company in an email to backers. Those rules, according to the email, do not allow for "offering purchased items and claiming to have made them yourself" and "presenting someone else's work as your own."
The device would simply be plugged into the user's router and powered using a free USB cable, then connected to the client through the other Ethernet port on the box.
A number of people had suggested that the device was essentially the same as a Chinese-made router that was far less expensive. These accusations began after it was found that there was a very similar product available from the e-commerce platform Alibaba. August Germar, a developer of the Anonabox, clarified that the device itself was built from a nearly stock board and changed a little to add more memory.
"Our board is custom and we have put a lot of work into it. If it were as easy as installing Tor on a regular router, everyone could just do it with their current home devices now, but it takes a lot of system resources to make Tor run smoothly," said Germar in an interview. "You need at least 16MB flash memory (not RAM) just for the Tor binaries themselves. Our current image is just over 10MB, which will not fit on most routers you could find even at Best Buy unless you paid $300."
Germar also said that the software was completely original and that Anonabox is speaking with two U.S. manufacturers. Not only that, but activists in Turkey and Hong Kong have reportedly made orders of between 500 to1,000 units in the last few days.
Other critics of the device followed, saying that the default settings left the wireless network open and included a hardcoded root password that could leave the system open to hackers or spying. These accusations led to the Kickstarter campaign of the device falling by $25,000.
In more recent days, Germar said that he had never intended the device to be aimed at the average consumer, but rather developers who would be able to give feedback on the product, leading to it being improved.
A number of users praised Kickstarter for pulling the project, thanking the company for protecting them. Other users, however, went on to ask where they would be able to get their hands on a device now that the campaign was no longer active.
