Tor (The Onion Router)
Tor has its origins in the United States Naval Research Laboratory, where it was created by a team of mathematicians in the late 1990s to give the government an extra layer of encryption in communicating sensitive messages.
Its main application was to protect intergovernmental communications and intelligence information from being intercepted by foreign entities.
Today, the browser is part of a larger open-source initiative called The Tor Project, which is, in part, funded by the U.S. Department of Defence.
It is tasked with creating a series of programs to access and improve functions of The Onion Router (Tor) network, which is what the Tor browser operates through.
The Onion Router network is an extremely unique technical invention. It is filled with websites that end with a .onion domain, contrary to the commonplace domain suffixes found on the surface web such as .com, .org, .edu, and countless others.
The Tor browser can be used to access the surface web, the deep web and the dark web. And it’s easy to use since its interface and intuitiveness is nearly identical to that of surface web-only browser Mozilla Firefox as the front end is clone of it.
But when you look under the hood of how The Tor Browser actually works, its inner functions are completely different.
When you use the Tor browser, your connection bumps off a set of relays run by volunteers from around the world on a distributed network that extends from one end node to the other. The distributed nature of the network is precisely what allows for the Tor browser to protect your anonymity.
It attempts to prevent your location and browsing habits from being picked up by the sites you visit and communicate with.
So, The Tor Browser has the ability to protect your anonymity in a superficial sense (provided you don’t register accounts on dark web sites with your real name and sensitive information). But just because the Tor network is mostly anonymous does not mean it’s secure.
However, when using the browser, a few measures ought to be taken to ensure that your IP address is not leaked.
Among them is to make sure that all other applications are closed and to keep the Tor browser to its default size.
Other guidelines ought to be followed to ensure that your privacy and security is safeguarded while you’re browsing through the dark web in particular.
These guidelines involve using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which will give you an extra boost in security as you navigate the dark web and also give you a fail safe from Tor vulnerabilities such as when it leaks your real IP, as it has before.
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