Tor is also used increasingly often to perform cyber-attacks. Recent studies have revealed that a large amount of the content hosted on Tor’s hidden services is linked to suspicious or illegal activities such as black market drugs, illegal firearms and extreme pornography. Obviously, the convenient (and relative) anonymity attract people with some less honorable intentions.
These are what Tor was built for, and are only a fraction of the legitimate use cases for Tor.ĭespite these noble goals Tor also has a dark side. Journalists, dissidents, and non-governmental organizations all use Tor for sensitive communications or for bypassing laws in countries where the internet is tightly regulated by the government. Individuals can use Tor to prevent websites from tracking them or to access websites blocked by their local Internet providers. To keep it simple, using Tor makes it more difficult (but not impossible) for Internet activity to be traced back to the user. These sites are often called the dark web or deep web. Tor also provides hidden services that allow users to publish websites and services without revealing their location or the identity of their owners.
The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the original unencrypted data to its destination without any knowledge of the source IP address. Each relay decrypts a single layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay of the circuit in order to pass the remaining encrypted data onwards. Tor encrypts data, including the destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a virtual circuit of randomly selected relays. Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network consisting of more than seven thousand relays to conceal a user’s location and traffic from anyone surveilling the network with traffic analysis. Users located in countries with strict censorship laws can use it to access restricted sites like Facebook, Google, foreign news websites or forums privately. Tor offers anonymous browsing capabilities to people across the world.
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