Tor (short for The Onion Router)is a system intended to
enable online anonymity. Tor client software directs internet traffic through a
worldwide volunteer network of servers to conceal a user's location or usage
from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Tor was
originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion
routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It was originally
developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting
government communications. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of
purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers,
activists, and many others.
"Onion
Routing" refers to the layered nature of the encryption service: The
original data are encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times, then sent through
successive Tor relays, each one of which decrypts a "layer" of
encryption before passing the data on to the next relay and, ultimately, its
destination. This reduces the possibility of the original data being
unscrambled or understood in transit
Tor aims to conceal its users' identities and their network
activity from surveillance and traffic analysis by separating identification
and routing. It is an implementation of onion routing, which encrypts and then
randomly bounces communications through a network of relays run by volunteers
around the globe. These onion routers employ encryption in a multi-layered
manner (hence the onion metaphor) to ensure perfect forward secrecy between
relays, thereby providing users with anonymity in network location. That
anonymity extends to the hosting of censorship-resistant content via Tor's
anonymous hidden service feature.
Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding
their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil
liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive
analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers.
They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and
timing of communication.
Once inside a Tor network, the traffic is sent from router
to router, ultimately reaching an exit node at which point the cleartext packet
is available and is forwarded on to its original destination. Viewed from the
destination, the traffic appears to originate at the Tor exit node.
Tor can also provide anonymity to servers in the form of
location-hidden services, which are Tor clients or relays running specially
configured server software. Rather than revealing the server's IP address (and
therefore its network location), hidden services are accessed through
Tor-specific .onion pseudo top-level domain (TLD), or "pseudomain,"
making it one realm of the so-called darknet. The Tor network understands this
TLD and routes data anonymously both to and from the hidden service. Due to
this lack of reliance on a public address, hidden services may be hosted
The Tor client is free software and use of the Tor network
is free of charge
http://www.torproject.org.in/
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