These relays are not publicly registered, so they are much harder to trace. These are routers run by volunteers who allow people to run their Tor traffic through their bandwidth. Therefore, to put a spanner in the works of any ISP out to hunt Tor users, your Tor browser can instead be redirected to a ‘relay’ somewhere in the world (also known as a ‘node’ or a ‘bridge’). It’s in an ISP’s best business interest for you not to use Tor as they make money selling your user information. This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to intercept the traffic.Īs Tor servers become known to ISPs (Internet Service Providers) around the world, it becomes easier to block them.

Tor traffic first gets re-routed through several public Tor servers, each one not knowing where the next server will be. Here is where Tor is much different from your standard vanilla Internet browser. In other words, you can use Tor to have your location and browsing history completely concealed. It is modified from the Mozilla Firefox browser and acts like a virtual private network. There are also Android and iOS equivalents. Tor ( The Onion Router) is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Therefore, it got a lot of its funding from the US Government, but today, the purpose of Tor has done a complete 180 degrees and is now used to protect people from the government, the very entity that funded Tor in the first place! Governments and law enforcement now hate Tor because people can do what they want online with anonymity (and, in some cases, impunity). In what must be the ultimate twist in irony, Tor was originally developed by the US Navy. Ordinary privacy and security-minded Internet users are now using it to make sure they are not being tracked and monitored online.Activists and resistance fighters use it in totalitarian countries and regions such as China, Russia, and the Middle East to criticize their governments and the police, military, and courts.

Journalists use it to protect their sources and themselves from government interference.There are also many worthy legitimate uses. Some people may have a narrow-minded view of Tor (Dark Web, only for criminals, etc). But how about keeping that location information away from hackers so they can’t order 500 pizzas with your credit card and have them delivered to your home address? The Myth Versus Reality

Yes, I know you love your Firefox or your Chrome with their amazing extensions.

What does the tor browser look like