“Tor” evokes an image of the dark web; a place to hire hitmen or buy drugs that, at this point, is overrun by feds trying to catch you in the act. The reality, however, is a lot more boring than that — but it’s also more secure.
The Onion Router, now called Tor, is a privacy-focused web browser run by a nonprofit group. You can
download it for free and use it to shop online or browse social media, just like you would on Chrome or Firefox or Safari, but with additional access to unlisted websites ending in .onion. This is what people think of as the “dark web,” because the sites aren’t indexed by search engines. But those sites aren’t an inherently criminal endeavor.
“This is not a hacker tool,” said Pavel Zoneff, director of strategic communications at The Tor Project. “It is a browser just as easy to use as any other browser that people are used to.”
That’s right, despite common misconceptions, Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity. This may sound familiar, because it’s how a lot of people approach
VPNs, but the difference is in the details.
