What is Tor | Explaining How does Tor Work & Dark side of Tor Browser

What is Tor ?

Tor (also referred as the Onion router) is a free and open source software which provides anonymity to the user. Initially Tor network was developed by the US military and received its funding from the government. Nowadays apart from US navy officials, tor has been used by normal people who wants to safeguard their privacy from ISPs and advertisers. 

When it was developed its sole purpose was to stop third parties from learning your online privacy and tracing your current location. Moreover tor is one of the best tools available for users who wants to stay anonymous. They do this by masking your IP address (similar to a proxy connection). 

Even though tor comes with a lot of benefits there are certain negative effects of it as well. Some websites take necessary actions to block tor network. A site where you visit frequently can turn into 404 error while using tor. Because still tor does not deny the fact that it is using tor. In this case you have a configure your tor browser. Currently tor network is available in the form of browsers. Therefore, to access the tor network you just need to download the tor browser or the app. Tor browsers can be directly downloaded from the manufacturer's website  while the android and IOS versions are available at Play store and App store respectively.

How does Tor work ?

The technique used by the tor network is similar to the onion routing. Thus, the name Onion router is given for this. A tor network uses almost 7000 relays/nodes and 800 bridges. Each node has its own IP address. 

When a user connects through the tor, their internet traffic goes through at least 3 of these nodes. First the traffic reaches the entry node and then the exit node before reaching the destination. Similarly incoming traffic is also enrouted. Only through the final node the websites will be able to identify the IP address. While passing though these nodes the traffics are also encrypted multiple times. At each node the traffic gets decrypted. But the traffic will not get fully decrypted until it reaches the destination. Finally the webpage will be identifying the request is made from the exit node, which eventually opens access. 

Is Tor illegal ?

It is true that because of the nature of tor, it is often associated with fraudulent activities. Moreover most ISPs don't encourage their customers to use tor. Besides that there are many reasons why an average user needs to use tor. Apart from some countries like China and Venezuela, most of the other nations allows the use of tor. For most western countries however suing tor is completely legal. Currently China and Venezuela are the 2 countries which bans tor. 

Dark Side of Tor

Not all the users who use tor are genuine. Especially criminals use tor as it grants access to dark web. These criminals conduct their illegal activities though the tor network as the dark web prevents criminals from getting arrested. At the same time tor can be used for web hosting. This means that certain websites can be made accessible to people only using the tor browser. These sites are known as .onion sites which is also a part of dark web. However there are some legitimate .onion sites as well.