Have you Heard of “TOR” or The Online Router?
Until recently I was actually not familiar with The Onion Router, but I have done my research and now it is time to share with you what this thing they call TOR is. TOR is the acronym for The Onion Router, of course, and was not always called TOR. This became the official name for it in 2006 after many years of development.
It started off in the United States Research Labs of the Navy and ended up with the name “The Onion Router” because of the way it layers and encrypts those on the network. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) funded the project and this is when it moved from a military project to a project the public might be able to see one day.
The goal is to create a program that will allow all users to browse the internet anonymously. Currently the project is headed by “The TOR Project”, which is a group dedicated to finding a way to make this program work best for the public. With the issues of internet security and privacy this is becoming more and more of a necessity in our world.
The Important Details About The Onion Router
The first thing one must understand about The Onion Router is how it protects you if you are using the network. It will take the signal you are putting out and bounce it around the world. You have to first download the TOR browser to use this project and it can be found at the TOR Homepage Here.
The best part is the browser is not cluttered with a ton of garbage and it actually is very easy to use. It does not allow scripts to come through at all unless you approve them and there are no cookies to be saved. This helps to keep your information safe and you don’t have to worry as much about your privacy.
Your signal will actually get encrypted more than once when you visit any website on the TOR browser. This helps to protect you from being hacked and if you were to get hacked they would not be able to get your private information. Often times they use hundreds of relays which encrypt your signal each time before it reaches the final destination.
This might all sound like it is great, but you are probably wondering how long it takes when you are browsing like this. It does sound like so many relays could really slow you down, but this actually happens in a matter of seconds. It is just slightly slower than using a normal browsing service.
It has been said that nobody could possibly trace the traffic using The Onion Router browser. This, at the moment, is very true and it is because of the way TOR works with the websites. It actually finds the unindexed site that is invisible to the search engines through a 16 character hash tag and public encryption.
One great benefit is TOR can be used for anything you want online. It has been called the “Internet Unchained” and like me this might be the first you are hearing of it. You can use it for all of your normal sites and, of course, for anything you want a higher level of security for. Even if you are simply checking out the news you can use The Onion Router to do exactly that.
Just so we are clear we are not endorsing you to do anything through this article. We know that many people will use this information for things they shouldn’t and we cannot stop you, but in no way, shape, or form are we endorsing those activities.
Using the Anonymous Browser, The Onion Router
Many have been asking for more privacy on the internet. There are all types of things from the information Facebook puts out to your own bank information being stolen that put you at risk. You need to make sure you are protected and this is why TOR was developed. Part of the problem with this is not everything should be private.
The main reason The Onion Router has not hit more papers as front page news is due to the groups that have used it for things that are not exactly good. These are, of course, isolated incidents and it would be impossible to keep the evil from benefiting from a tool like this, but it still remains a bit unknown because of these reasons.
Many have tested out TOR to try and find a weakness and nobody has been able to do so just yet. As this moves forward we should see some major changes if The Onion Router is the next step in privacy online.
Tags: internet privacy, internet security, The Onion Router, The Onion Router browser, The Onion Router security, tor, tor browser, what is The Onion Router