Is Tor inherently safe to use as a normal web browser?

VPN
1

I want a way to browse the web, watch movies, anime, youtube, etc. in total privacy without having my activity be monitored by my internet service provider, parents, or anyone else. But I’ve always heard all these things about the dark web and how shady/illegal things go on there, and that Tor is the way to get there. If I use the Tor browser, would it make me more susceptible to dangerous people/activities? How can I go about using Tor (or some other browser) for my intent without ending up in any trouble?

Also, does it work like a normal browser or is it slower? And would I need adblockers and extensions for it?

2

You’re asking if Tor Browser is particularly unsafe. No, it’s the opposite – it’s safer than almost any browser out there.

It’s also just a browser, where you choose where to go. Like any other browser, you can choose to use it to visit shady and illegal websites. When you do that with Tor Browser, nobody except yourself will know that you did it, because Tor protects your anonymity, unlike regular browsers.

Using Tor Browser for the things you describe may not be a good fit, however. Lots of ordinary sites make life hard for Tor users by blocking them or putting them through endless captchas (“prove you’re not a robot”). Even when you have no issue with that, watching videos will be slow and sometimes not work for other reasons.

If you want a browser of comparable safety but without the difficulties arising from protecting your anonymity, you can have a look at LibreWolf.

3

In short, no tor will not bring you to dark web. And you shouldn’t use it as regular browser or at least for high bandwidth demand use.

But is way better if you read and learn from the source https://support.torproject.org/

4

I mean, yea, it works. The main issue will be the extension blocking all the videos. It’ll also be pretty slow, and the captchas will probably break, etc.

Don’t install any other extensions, that’ll give you a unique identifier (fingerprint) and will basically deanonymise. Tor is meant to make everyone look the same.

If you want something similar to Tor, try the Mullvad Browser. It’s got the hide-in-the-crowd fingerprint protection like Tor (because it’s developed with the Tor team), and comes with uBlock Origin installed.

Mullvad Browser is made to be used with the Mullvad VPN, but you can use it without it. The VPN is a steal though, like 5.50 USD for 1 month, and it’s not an auto-renewal thing, you can pay for it when you want, and despite the price, it’s a really good VPN

5

If you want to use a normal browser and just want to hide your ip address, you can use brave browser. You can open a window routed through tor with it. Pretty good for some usecases, but it’s not as anonymous as tor browser of course.

6

No due to tor nodes the speed would be extremely slow. And using a VPN doesn’t help. Use a normal browser like Chrome or edge or brave or safari or Firefox etc.

7

Tor would be frustratingly slow for normal browsing with the ads and other crap that most websites have on them these days. And for watching movies or Youtube it’s basically unusuable.

8

Tor is not meant or optimized for daily usage. There are many private browsers developed for that purpose so use them instead unless you like painfully slow speeds and broken websites, and probably plenty of other issues.

9

Bro, just use Firefox ESR, go in about:config and disable all telemetry, geo location, cookies persistence and all u can find for privacy oriented and in about:preferences to activate https only, disable cookies, send NotTack signals to all sites and just enjoy life… nothing is perfect, but if u try to much to be anon u raise a lot of red flags, u must to find a balance for what u want to do

10

Safe? Of course, if you’re not using it do illegal things then there is nothing illegal about using it just like a regular browser. But you shouldn’t do it. That’s not the point of the network. Keep in mind all the nodes that make the network are volunteer based, often they are running on cheap VPS providers, cheap rented servers, home networks (bridges mainly), etc and the bandwidth and performance reflects that.

The TOR network is for working around censorship and provide anonymity to users needing to stay under the radar of their governments for example. It’s not a network for catching up on your favorite anime.

11

I asked chatGPT if USA and other law enforcement agencies were operating exit nodes on larger basis each year and it more or less said they don’t talk about it much but absolutely they have a exit node policy so I starting to wonder is it 1 in 10 or 1 in 5 etc run by the alphabet boys

12

It’s like asking if using a car equipped with a roll cage on a daily basis is safe.

13

It’s not unsafe relative to other browsers, but note it’s not meant to be undetectable. I have detected it (that’s easy) and found the location of the person using it.

…then sent them a picture of their house.

14

Thanks! Would using Tor or LibreWolf cause you to stick out or get flagged by the government or your ISP or something? Like is it automatically suspicious?

15

To add, Tor is also mainly an onion router, as the name says - so if you just need a private browser for regular daily usage then there is little reason to pick Tor over something like Librewolf. Daily driving Tor is just going to make everything painfully slow and give you a bunch of broken websites.

16

I initially tried out Brave, but then I read that the brave browser is a scam, like they don’t actually protect your privacy. And on the Tor FAQ page (or I’m mistaken and it was somewhere else?) they said not to use the Brave Tor browsing option because it doesn’t actually protect you. Idk if it’s true but there seem to be entire reddit discussions about it. Hence why I’m looking into other options now.

17

Why do people with no knowledge about a subject feel the need to answer questions about the subject they don’t understand?

18

Tor probably gets you flagged – not because of the browser, but because you’re using the Tor network. LibreWolf just pretends to be Firefox on Windows 10, so it hardly stands out.

That said, you’re already flagged. We all are. They’re watching you right now. It’s best not to think too much about it.

19

Honestly, you’d be better trying out a Live Linux OS that runs from USB stick.

The ISP will still see what sites you go to, but they can’t see what you’re actually doing on that website as long as the website enforces https

As long as you’re not going onto a drug-dealing or credit-card sharing forum, the ISP won’t give a damn.

Copyright streaming a .i.e. anime — the ISP can’t tell what it is.

Torrenting an anime however, that can’t be anonymous — as copyright enforcers may be logging IP addresses

2 browser changes you can install to enforce this. Install a https every plugin, and change Firefox to use DoH in settings (DNS over HTTPS)

The problem is that USB live sessions are dynamic — everything is lost when you reboot.

You want a distro that can be made persistent — i.e. changes are written to the free space on the USB stick

Be aware that USB sticks aren’t particularly robust — a lot of writing to the stick will eventually cause it to fail, so don’t misplace passwords or anything.

This is not foolproof nor anonymous, but it’s more to deter casual parent or ISP snooping.

Nothing is perfect, but it’s probably good enough.

Just don’t use this for illegal sites like drugs or card sharing

TOR is indeed the superior option — but it leaves traces on your PC that it was used — you might want to look at TAILS instead — this is another Linux OS that runs from USB but is designed around anonymity and routes everything possible over TOR — not just the web browser.

It, too, can have a persistent storage area — a small encrypted partition you can store passwords, bookmarks etc in.

Tails - Persistent Storage — there are a few vids on YouTube about it too.

20

I should also point out that using LibreWolf does not prevent the ISP or the government or your parents from finding out about what you were doing on the computer through other means.