Maybe you’re an activist or journalist under surveillance. Or maybe your life isn’t that dangerous or exciting and you simply like privacy. Whatever your purpose, you will be pleased to know that you can browse the Internet anonymously with Tor.
With Tor Browser, you can surf the Web with near-complete certainty that you are unnoticed. By encrypting your traffic through its Onion network, Tor will make your Web trackers think that you live in a different continent or country by giving them an IP address located with a distant location.
Maintained by the non-profit Tor Project, the browser has been associated with the illegal Silk Road marketplace, but is also used by social workers, journalists and human rights activists to avoid online surveillance. And because of its strength, totalitarian regimes and the NSA hate it when you use it.
How Tor Works
A simple version of this question explained by Tor’s full name: The Onion Router. The analogous phrase refers to hiding information beneath layers of encryption like an onion.
This technique developed by the U.S. Navy to protect online intelligence communications in the 1990s. If you’re browsing with Tor, your Internet traffic is filtered through several of the thousands of computers all over the world that run Tor relay. Tor’s onion network is a composite of all of the relays around the world, mostly by volunteers.
This picture, courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, perfectly illustrates how it works:
How To Use Tor
The simplest way to use Tor is to download the Tor Browser Bundle, which is free and available for OSX, Windows and Linux users. After doing that, you can open the browser and begins surfing anonymously. Though while Tor is very strong, de-anonymization is possible, so it’s best to follow some of the tips below.
Important Tor Tips
– Don’t open anything that you download during a Tor browsing session.
– Use Tor from a public network, not from home.
– While running a Tor relay or bridge is a very decent thing to do, but it’s best to ask your ISP for permission before you do so.
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