The 5 Things You Should Know About Tor

Ever since it came on the scene, Tor has allowed many an Internet user to surf the Web, chat, and explore without fear of being tracked online.

In this day and age of censorship running amok in some countries, mass surveillance, and outright tracking of the people by agencies such as the NSA and CIA, it becomes necessary to have ways of protecting ourselves online. Tor is such a way.

The last two days, I’ve covered a very good way to protect yourself online – VPNs. I’ve explored how they work, which are the best options for you, and how to get them.

Today, I’ll cover how the Tor browser works, in an easy way you can understand, through 5 simple facts you can easily understand.

Lets get started, shall we?

1 - Tor stands for “The Onion Router”

Gonna start with some history here – feel free to skip If this doesn’t interest you. It will be brief!

The history behind this tech starts in the good ol’ 90s, when some military scientists decided to invent a way to protect America’s communications online.

DARPA took it on and improved it a lot. By 2002, an alpha version of this technology came out.

A couple of years later, with the help of the US Government, the Tor browser was launched.

It has attracted some attention in tech circles in recent years – you see, it’s supposed to be unhackeable. That’s one of its’ main calling cards, even. However, some people, namely the NSA have shown that they can in fact hack it, without really disclosing how.

Without further ado, let’s get into the good stuff!

2 – Onion routing involves a lot of encryption – layered like an onion

This is the main tech principle behind this tech, so let me try to explain it with an analogy.

Suppose Alice and Bob want to send messages to each other, but they don’t want anyone to know it’s from them to each other (for “Romeo and Juliet” reasons, or whatever).

What they have however is a nice network of friends, like the one I’m trying to get on Steemit! And a lot of creativity, which I sadly don’t really have :(

So, Alice takes a message she wants to send to Bob, and writes it in a code that she knows only her and some other friend can understand. Then, cuz she’s crazy prepared, she wraps it in many layers of pieces of paper, each of which with a message on it, with a code only another friend can figure out.

She hands the monstrosity she created to Mary. Mary, the good friend, reads the first piece of paper, deciphers the code, and it says “Take this paper for yourself, give the rest to Luke.”. She even tries to read the rest (not such a good friend) but can’t understand diddly squat, because it’s in a code she doesn’t get.

She hands it to Luke, who then deciphers his part of the code, and reads “Take this paper and give the rest to Sarah”. He does. Sarah then deciphers the next code, reads the note, and hands it off to Mike. Then a lot of other people, until it gets to Bob.

Notice how if you’d asked Mike, he couldn’t tell you where this chain of messages started, nor who the final target was.

That’s basically how Tor works. Every “person” (let’s call them nodes) in this metaphor could only tell you who gave them the message, and who they passed it too.

This is how Tor preserves your anonymity.

3 – Tor helps a lot of people remain private online, for good…”

Did you see me list off why anonymity online is a good thing, in my VPN article?

Anonymity online can have a great impact on society. The vast majority of Tor users are, in fact, normal people, who simply don’t want to get tracked online.

Haven’t you ever been a little creeped out how Google already knows your native language? And your location? Tor allows people to get around that.

Furthermore, journalists and activists, who want to transmit sensitive info online often use this technology. Panama Papers would never have happened without this kind of technology. Whistleblowers all around the world can rest easy knowing that this technology will save them from a very bad fate if they were to be spied on and caught for oppressive government.

…but we all know that’s not the whole story.

4 – …and for bad

There is some very bad publicity around this technology.

You’ve likely heard of Tor spoken of as a tool of cyber-criminals, and overall, very bad people.

Indeed, it’s privacy granting powers mean that this tech is often use by criminals to cover their tracks and keep them safe. It doesn’t help that the Dark Web, a haven for criminal activity, runs on this technology.

…and child pornography is a spine-chilling, and disgusting way for such a noble-spirited tech to end up used for.

Despite that, I maintain that Tor’s relevance will only increase as time goes on. And as I’ve mentioned before, now that the NSA has shown itself capable of piercing this technology (through means we don’t yet know), it’s criminal usage is bound to decrease. It will eventually return to being used the right way, by honest people, who simply exercise their deserved right of privacy.

That wraps this up!

Hope you liked this article! Tomorrow, if I'm able, I’ll cap off this week by posting an article about how the Deep Web works!

Feel free to ask me any question, or make any criticism you want to make :)

Steem on guys!