How Tor Can Help You Be Even More Anonymous Online

Recently, we explained how to choose a good VPN (Virtual Private Network), noting that a VPN's privacy policy should be a major factor in your choice. That's because a VPN is run by a single organization that could potentially monitor or log your traffic. If you want to try to protect your Internet activity from everyone, you need to send your traffic through layers of different entities, so no one can track what you're doing, not even a VPN provider. Thankfully there's technology that does just that, and it's called Tor, formerly The Onion Router. Layers. Onion. Get it?

How Tor Works - And Where To Find It

Here's how it works differently than a VPN. Imagine you want to send a letter anonymously. You could use a trusted courier to deliver it directly without others knowing or revealing your identity. That's roughly how a VPN works. Alternatively, you could use the regular postal service, dropping the letter in a mailbox from which it gets routed through various post offices until it reaches its destination. That's roughly how Tor works.

So what's the catch? Why isn't everyone using Tor? Well, like the letter analogy above, your data is taking the scenic route to get to its destination, not the fast, direct route. This longer route makes surfing the Internet slower. You also need to connect to the Tor network before you start browsing, similar to connecting to a VPN, although Tor software makes this easy with options for desktop and mobile:

• Tor Browser: A complete anonymizing browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Orbot: Tor connection for Android, to use with your existing browser.
• Onion Browser: A Tor browser for iOS.

While Tor can't guarantee anonymity, it's a great choice for protecting your identity online.

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