What is Tor Browser? Setting up, running and uninstalling the program

Tor Browser is software that can be used to provide an anonymous connection to the Internet, eliminating the possibility of eavesdropping. All data is transmitted in encrypted form. The user of this software is guaranteed complete anonymity on the network when visiting sites and working with most applications using the TCP protocol.

What is Tor Browser?

Many people think that anonymity exists on the Internet by default and do not know what kind of program it is – Tor Browser.

This is software that can be used in the following cases:

• If necessary, get access to certain information, including blocked by censorship authorities.
• If necessary, provide anonymous access to information, including mail, Internet sites, etc.
• For secure internet communication. Traffic passing through the Tor Browser is very difficult to monitor and listen to.
• If necessary, use hidden services. Tor can provide anonymity for both the client and the server by hiding the location of a resource on the Internet using specialized settings. However, due to the public nature of the Internet, these services cannot be called truly hidden.

It should be noted that in most cases the provider will know that the user is using the Tor network. On the one hand, this creates a potential threat to the user, on the other hand, this threat can be reduced with the help of additional utilities for masking traffic.

Attacks are periodically organized on the Tor network. It is inconvenient for most government agencies: it is impossible to track exactly where a person is on the Internet, whether he is engaged in illegal activities.

Video about installing and running Tor Browser

Today, this is not illegal, however, projects of legislative acts periodically appear that prohibit the use of anonymizers, in particular, Tor Browser. At the same time, the total number of this network exceeds three million people.

Today there are versions, solutions and modifications for all the latest operating systems. Anyone can protect themselves from unwanted listening to their own traffic, if necessary, get to sites blocked by the provider or other persons and decide for themselves what it is – Tor Browser.

How to use Tor Browser?

The next question of interest to many is how to use the Tor Browser. In most cases, Tor is built on top of Firefox. To start using this browser, just download it from the official site and install it on your computer. There are also portable versions that do not require installation.

Setting up Tor Browser is quite simple and takes place using a special program. At the first start, a start window appears in which you need to decide on the existing restrictions. If there are no Internet connection restrictions, you can connect to the network directly. If the connection is censored, this must be displayed separately in the browser’s network settings by going to the appropriate tab. Also, when setting up, you will need information about the presence of a firewall and the need for a proxy server. If the browser does not work after changing some parameters, the settings should be changed.

After setting up the connection, you can use Tor as a regular browser. The main disadvantage here is low speed. Pages load slowly: before reaching a particular browser, it passes through several servers around the world. This is a kind of payment for network anonymity.

You also need to take into account that there is practically no moderation and control in the hidden resources of the Tor network. There may be certain restrictions on some sites where the owners themselves set the rules, but on many resources there is no such control.

Tor and Linux

There are versions of Tor Browser that can run on Linux. To make working with the program as easy as possible, a special PPA repository was created that allows you to integrate and update the browser.

The easiest way to install Tor on Linux is to download the stable version of the program from the official resource. Versions for 32-bit and 64-bit systems differ, each chooses an archive depending on the OS architecture. After that, the archive with the program is unpacked to a suitable place and launched by a shortcut in the root of the folder.

Video about Tor Browser

Removing Tor Browser

Before deleting a program, it must be removed from memory. When Tor is closed, the list of sites visited during the open session is deleted and cookies are deleted. Due to this, the next time you visit these sites, the server will not recognize that you have already been on it and visited some pages. Each type of OS has its own procedure:

• To close the Tor browser in Linux, just click the "Exit" button. All related applications that provide traffic encryption, protection from eavesdropping and anonymity on the network will also automatically close.
• In Windows, after the standard closing of the browser, you should go to the "Task Manager" and check if there are open processes with the name tor.exe. If such processes are found, they must be terminated. In this case, the program will be unloaded from memory.

All of the above must be done before you remove Tor Browser from your computer. The removal process itself is very easy. Due to the fact that the application is installed in portable mode, all data will be stored in a strictly defined folder where the browser is installed. To completely uninstall an application, simply remove the corresponding directory. Other operations (uninstallation, clearing memory with special programs, etc.) are not required.