You’ve probably heard a lot about Tor these days, but you are not clear what it exactly does and why you would use it. Using Tor to browse the websites anonymously is a big hit recently. Like many underground phenomena on the Internet, it is poorly understood, wrapped in some sort of technological mysticism that people often regard as. If you have no patience in learning the basic theory of Tor, you can scroll down to the bottom and check the answer.


What is Tor? Should I use it for anonymous web surfing?

Tor is a computer network run by volunteers worldwide. Each volunteer runs what is called a relay, which is just a computer that runs software allowing users to connect to the Internet via the Tor network. Before hitting the open Internet, the Tor Browser will connect to several different relays, wiping its tracks each step of the way, making it difficult to figure out where, and who, you really are.

Since your data goes through a lot of relays, it's sluggish, so you'll experience a much slower internet than usual when you're using Tor. It is sure that this process would make a lot of average users giving up the usage.


The Benefits of using Tor

If you try to be anonymize everything you did on the Internet, to stay hidden from the authorities, Tor is one of the easiest ways. Meanwhile, it can also host web sites through its hidden services that are only accessible by other Tor users.

However, it is used by the criminals to make illegal deals, called dark web, like Alphabay. AlphaBay Market was an online darknet market which operated on an onion service of the Tor network.


What Tor can’t do

Tor actually is not promising perfect anonymous surfing. With enough work, the authorities can get into your browser and figure out who you are. Besides, surfing anonymously is not the same as security. You can still face the possible attacks as usual.


Therefore, as an average user who just wants to watch funny videos on YouTube and browses Twitter, using Tor is just slow down the network. If you try to stay anonymous online in the safe environment, you would better secure your anonymous web surfing by using Neptune SystemCare Ultimate to erase your browser search history, cookies and more to keep your internet privacy confidential and identity anonymous. After all, the ultimate target of anonymous surfing is staying online safe.