What is Tor?¶
Tor (The Onion Router) is an open-source anonymous communication network designed to protect users' privacy and freedom online. Tor anonymizes internet activity through multi-layer encryption and randomized routing — making surveillance and traffic analysis very difficult.
Each request travels through a randomly selected path of three relay nodes. At each node, one layer of encryption is peeled away (like an onion), and every node only knows its immediate neighbors — not the full path. This prevents any single point from seeing where traffic comes from and where it goes.
Tor also supports .onion services: addresses only reachable within the Tor network, adding another layer of anonymity for both operators and visitors.
Relay Types¶
The Tor network relies on volunteer-operated servers called relays, which fall into three roles:
- Guard Relay — the first node a user connects to. It knows the user's real IP address but not the final destination.
- Middle Relay — sits between the guard and exit. It sees neither the origin nor the destination, only its two neighbors.
- Exit Relay — the last node before traffic leaves Tor and enters the public internet. It knows the destination but not the user's real IP.
Bridge Nodes¶
In regions where access to Tor is blocked, users can connect through bridges — unlisted relays whose IP addresses are not published in the public Tor directory. Bridges are harder for censors to detect and block.
Bridges often use Pluggable Transports (such as obfs4, meek, or Snowflake) to disguise Tor traffic as ordinary HTTPS or other traffic types, making detection even harder.
:fontawesome-brands-tor-browser: Visit the Tor Project