What Is Tor?

How Does the Tor Search Engine Work?

By erasing your browsing history automatically with every session and encrypting your web traffic, using Tor can stop people and companies from learning your location or tracking your online habits. After downloading the Tor Browser, everything you do in the browser will go through the Tor network. This network disguises your identity by encrypting your traffic and moving it through different Tor servers, or nodes. If someone tries to identify you based on your browsing activity, they’ll only find the last server your data traffic moved through, making it difficult or impossible to pinpoint your identity.

What is the Tor Browser Used For?

For people who want to keep their browsing activity away from advertisers, internet service providers, or websites, using the Tor Browser provides privacy. Tor can also help people get around censorship restrictions in certain countries and can hide IP addresses. Journalists sometimes use the Tor browser to communicate with sources to protect sensitive information.

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What Tor Doesn’t Do

In general, using the Tor browser keeps your information private, but Tor only conceals your initial online browsing requests. If you make or sign into accounts online, your identity will no longer be private. Similarly, downloading add-ons or plug-ins may compromise your anonymity. It’s also possible for your identity to be discovered by using malware to reveal your IP address.

Is the Tor Browser Legal?

Using the Tor Browser is completely legal in most countries, including the United States. However, using Tor for illegal activities does not make the activities any less illegal. While there are many legitimate reasons to protect your identity online, you should never use Tor to bypass the law. Law enforcement agencies have several ways to identify illegal activity, even if it’s performed using Tor.

Should I Use Tor?

For most internet users, you likely don’t need to anonymize your internet activity. Tor’s triple-layered encryption makes the browser much slower than your normal internet connection and isn’t necessary for everyday web browsing. You also won’t be able to use browser plugins when using Tor. If you’d like to secure your internet when using public Wi-Fi, using HTTPS or even a VPN is a better alternative. Websites that use HTTPS:// in their URLs instead of HTTP:// show the same web content while encrypting your data and providing a more secure connection. While using a VPN won’t keep your identity anonymous, it will keep your data private.

Despite its minor flaws, the Tor browser can be an effective tool to protect your online data. While the average internet user probably does not need the anonymity and privacy that Tor provides, there’s no major downside to using the free browser.