Definition: Tor

(The Onion Routing protocol) A method for transmitting data anonymously over the Internet by routing messages through a decentralized network of roughly six thousand nodes run by volunteers. Tor is a virtual private network (VPN), except that all data packets are relayed through three or more servers rather than just one, and both source and destination addresses are never available to any single server. See VPN, Orbot and I2P.

Tor Uses "Onion" Routing
The onion analogy was derived from "peeling apart the layers" at each node like peeling an onion. In addition, although Tor can be used to retrieve any website, all websites on the Dark Web use the .onion domain and can only be accessed by the Tor browser. See Dark Web.

Firefox and DuckDuckGo
Tor uses a modified Firefox browser for Windows, Mac and Linux, and DuckDuckGo is the default search engine (see DuckDuckGo). When run, Tor sets up a connection to the Tor network, and all Web requests are re-routed to hide their identity. For details, see onion routing.

Government Initiated
In the mid-1990s, Tor was developed by the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) and launched in 2002. Two years later, the source code was released under an open source license. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (see EFF) funded development, and the Tor Project became a nonprofit in 2006.

Tor is extremely beneficial for people in countries with information restrictions. During the Arab Spring, Tor gave people in Middle Eastern countries access to blocked websites. Although there are circuitous ways to get around it, the Chinese continue to block Tor entry and exit points. See anonymous Web surfing and Freenet.

The Tor Home Page in 2020

An imaginative plea for donations during the COVID pandemic.

The Onion Theme

Tor is all about onion routing and onion websites. See onion routing.