Your laptop connects to a Tor entry node, which in turn connects to a Tor relay. Tor is like chaining together multiple VPNs at the same time.

To get around this, some users will use a VPN, which sits between the connection between your computer and the website, helping to hide your real IP and identity. However, your ISP can see which website you’re connecting to, or even change it, which means they are often asked to block websites, such as The Pirate Bay. Using HTTPS means your connection is encrypted, so your data is safe from interception, snooping, or tampering. When you open a website, your real IP address is exposed, which can be used to determine your location, ISP and much more. To help explain it, let’s look at a simplified diagram of how your computer connects to a website.

Naval Research Lab and is named “onion” due to the layers of privacy and encryption. Tor uses a process called “onion routing”, and its name was originally an acronym for “The Onion Router”. We’ll explore how to detect Tor traffic, how to block it, and analyse whether blocking is a good approach. On the public internet, Tor is often used by credit card fraudsters to hide their true identity when they’re using stolen card information.ĭue to a large amount of illegal use, some internet providers and websites block access from Tor.

These illegal sites, known collectively as the “dark web”, are only accessible using Tor using special links – for example, the original Silk Road URL was silkroad6ownowfk.onion. Due to this, it’s commonly used for illegal activities, such as purchasing weapons or drugs. The core ethos behind Tor is that internet users should have private access to an uncensored web. Tor is commonly used to anonymise internet traffic.

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