Tor: anonymity online
Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.
Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Tor for a wide variety of reasons: journalists and bloggers, human rights workers, law enforcement officers, soldiers, corporations, citizens of repressive regimes, and just ordinary citizens. See the Who Uses Tor? page for examples of typical Tor users. See the overview page for a more detailed explanation of what Tor does, and why this diversity of users is important.
Tor doesn't magically encrypt all of your Internet activities, though. You should understand what Tor does and does not do for you.
Tor's security improves as its user base grows and as more people volunteer to run relays. (It isn't nearly as hard to set up as you might think, and can significantly enhance your own security.) If running a relay isn't for you, we need help with many other aspects of the project, and we need funds to continue making the Tor network faster and easier to use while maintaining good security.
Tor is a registered 501(c)(3) U.S. non-profit whose mission is to allow you to protect your Internet traffic from analysis. Please make a tax-deductible donation.
News
- 29 March 2010: Tor and Printfection announce The Tor Store. More details are available in the press release.
- 16 March 2010: Tor 0.2.1.25 released as stable. Fixes a regression introduced in 0.2.1.23 that could prevent relays from guessing their IP address correctly. It also fixes several minor potential security bugs. Read the full announcement for the list of changes.
- 21 February 2010: Tor 0.2.1.24 released as stable. Fixes compatibility with recent Apple OSX openssl changes and adds some performance enhancements. Read the announcement for the full list of changes.
- We are actively looking for new sponsors and funding. If your organization has an interest in keeping the Tor network usable and fast, please contact us. Sponsors of Tor also get personal attention, better support, publicity (if they want it), and get to influence the direction of our research and development. Please donate.