What is Tor Browser? : The onion router explained

Tor Browser is a free software for enabling anonymous communication. The word TOR is the abbreviation of the onion router. The initial release of this web browser was back in September 20, 2002. It is coded in Rust, C and Python. It has a size of 50-55 MB.

The concept of privacy has now become a great deal since everyone now needs privacy in their work on their computer system and they want to keep their information private including their location, the website they visit, the web pages surfed by them, the videos watched and as basic as their IP Address. VPN plays a important role for excelling on these grounds but still it has some vulnerabilities and there are many ways by which the IP address of a particular user can be traced.

Briefing -

Here, comes the role of tor, if you open a web page, for example, Google in your tor browser that will be downloaded in your system, the data packets that exits from your system are completely encrypted and the moment those packets enter the tor network, they are bounced to different places, this means your IP is changed multiple times, and the different nodes don't know where the signal is coming from or where it will go, the only thing they know is that, what was the previous node and which will be the next one, in short this means that your user identity is completely hidden and when this signal signal gets out of this tor network, then it will go to google, and the particular web does not know what is your location.

Also Read -
What is Google Duplex?
What is VPN?

Tor directs the traffic on it through a worldwide overlay network consisting of more than 7000 relays to conceal your location.
In VPN, you use a specific location other than yours i.e a single IP is used but in the case of TOR there is the system of multiple IP bouncing.
Also, if you combine tor and VPN, you can be completely sure that no one can trace you.


Tor is not at all you need to browse anonymously! You may need to change some of your browsing habits to ensure your identity is concealed, or your identity will not be private that I think you do not want.

Conditions to browse anonymously over tor -

• Use tor browser for all the browsing purposes, not any application on your system.
• Don't use Torrent over tor.
• Don't install any plug-ins. 
• Use HTTPS versions of the website.
• Don't connect to any of the bridge connections over the internet.

Also, my personal view is that never use tor in full window because it might effect your privacy, and your IP might be visible over the web.

Some of the common uses of  Tor Browser -

1. To surf the web pages anonymously. 
2. To surf the videos and texts not available in a particular region.
3. To surf the deep and dark web.

Flaws of Tor -

There are some vulnerabilities in the tor, there are possible tested ways in which your IP can still be known even if you are surfing the web using tor. One of the vulnerabilities is window size. Never change the window size of the tor browser beacuse a window size is maintained by tor and you must keep it same as the other tor users, by doing this you will not look strange over the web, but if you resize the window, some of the java scripts are left which can directly interact with your device, and your device software (except tor) is connected with the normal internet, this way your location will be easily traced and you no more will be anonymous.

Conclusion -

Sometimes, in many kinds of situations we need to be anonymous on the internet so that we can maintain a privacy while surfing the web, but also we must take precautions so that our privacy is safe or else the web is also having disastrous evils who can hack your data or breach your privacy, and in all these cases tor browser will help you.

Download TOR -  Download Tor Browser

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