Sorry for the noob question. I am disabled and have a hard time researching.
Is Tor just a browser? Or a free VPN?
What exactly is it? I get the idea of relaying and all that. Just wondering if it protects browsing only, or everything online? Have it downloaded for a long time. Never used it. Thanks.
Is Tor just a browser? Or a free VPN?
If you mean the Tor Browser, yes, it is a browser. It is not a VPN.
What exactly is it?
Tor Browser is free software that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor Browser allows both organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy. Tor is an effective censorship circumvention tool, allowing its users to reach otherwise blocked destinations or content. Tor prevents your ISP or somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, Tor prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location and your computer’s IP address, and Tor lets you access sites which are blocked. No Internet browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, etc., preserve users’s online anonymity. Tor Browser preserves users’ online anonymity and protects their privacy.
This Tor Project page describes some of the many different kinds of people using Tor, including everyday “normal people”, journalists and their audiences, activists and whistleblowers, lawyers, business executives, bloggers, IT professionals, students, retirees, military and law enforcement personnel, web surfers, and many others.
Just wondering if it protects browsing only, or everything online?
Tor does not protect all of your computer’s Internet traffic when you run it. Tor only protects your applications that are properly configured to send their Internet traffic through Tor. To avoid problems with Tor configuration, the Tor Project strongly recommends you use the Tor Browser. The Tor Project has pre-configured the Tor Browser to protect your privacy and anonymity on the web as long as you’re browsing with Tor Browser itself. Almost any other web browser configuration is likely to be unsafe to use with Tor.
Don’t torrent over Tor. Torrent file-sharing applications have been observed to ignore proxy settings and make direct connections even when they are told to use Tor. Even if your torrent application connects only through Tor, you will often send out your real IP address in the tracker GET request, because that’s how torrents work. Not only do you deanonymize your torrent traffic and your other simultaneous Tor web traffic this way, you also slow down the entire Tor network for everyone else.
Don’t open documents downloaded through Tor while online. Tor Browser will warn you before automatically opening documents that are handled by external applications. DO NOT IGNORE THIS WARNING. You should be very careful when downloading documents via Tor (especially DOC and PDF files, unless you use the PDF viewer that’s built into Tor Browser) as these documents can contain Internet resources that will be downloaded outside of Tor by the application that opens them. This will reveal your non-Tor IP address. If you must work with DOC and/or PDF files, the Tor Project strongly recommends either using a disconnected computer, downloading the free VirtualBox and using it with a virtual machine image with networking disabled, or using Tails. Under no circumstances is it safe to use BitTorrent and Tor together, however.
You’re most likely talking about Tor Browser.
Tor Browser is the way to use the Tor network when wanting to browse the web. It is originally based on Firefox, but it is a lot more than Firefox + some settings changes + plus some addons.
Tor Browser will not make everything on your computer go over the Tor network. Only what you do within Tor Browser will go over the Tor network.
Tor is a network, and Tor browser is a convenient easy way to access the Tor network. To make Tor protect more then just your Tor browser you need to set network proxy via socks host as 127.0.0.1:9150 while you have the Tor browser opened. Note that some applications may leak, and your Tor connection will end at whatever point you decide to close the browser.
Thank you for your detailed answer. I have been wanting to get it started for a while. About to get into for certain now.
I wonder why most people do not use Tor?
I have nothing to hide. But I don’t like people watching me poop either. Doesn’t mean I have anything to hide in the bathroom. Spying just makes me feel uncomfortable.
Thank you again.
Thank you all for your help.
It’s not like we’d get pissed if you were hiding something either. Most people here are very active in the art of weed n shit
I wonder why most people do not use Tor?
I think your question begs multiple answers. One answer: Mainstream media seldom reports anything about Tor, and, when it does, the report likely will be about the BfV arrest of child-porn criminals who were using Tor, or some other report involving Tor and a criminal, but the report will fail to mention to the audience anything about the anonymity and privacy benefits for Tor users, and that Tor is for everyone.
I have nothing to hide. But I don’t like people watching me poop either. Doesn’t mean I have anything to hide in the bathroom. Spying just makes me feel uncomfortable.
Me, too. Online anonymity is everyone’s human right. Cheers