Ho can I encrypt my internet traffic and hide my IP with Firefox/ Tor Browser Bundle?

Question

Apparently Firefox and Tor can help me with this but how?
I get a lot of technical answers when I Google these questions. I figured out I need to download the Tor Browser Bundle but when I look for support I get here, to the Mozilla Support Forum. Im confused? Being 50 years old and living in Africa means I did not have the same exposure to technology than people in first world countries did at my age.
My Google AND bank account was hacked which my my life hell. I took better precautions and would like to encrypt my traffic and hide my IP address now but it is so complex and technical :-(

Answer 1

I personally would never trust an anonymous proxy to do any financial or bank traffic or even access a website that need authentication (log in) because you set up a connection to such a proxy and the proxy set up the connection to the website or another proxy if multiple proxies are chained.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server
Using a proxy won't help if your computer is infected with malware or if you use weak passwords that can be guessed or found via a dictionary look up or via phishing attempts.
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Choosing+More+Secure+Passwords
Everything starts with a clean computer and being cautious with installing software or clicking links in an e-mail and regularly doing checks for malware.
You can do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
All these programs have free versions.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
*Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:<br>http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
*AdwCleaner:<br>http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/<br>http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml
*SuperAntispyware:<br>http://www.superantispyware.com/
*Microsoft Safety Scanner:<br>http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
*Windows Defender:<br>http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender
*Spybot Search & Destroy:<br>http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
*Kasperky Free Security Scan:<br>http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
*Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:<br>http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446
See also:
*"Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked