So what?
A store tour is short for the onion router, and it's basically a network of computers or servers designed
to improve anonymity and privacy.
It's the most common anonymizing network with the most amount of users, and it also allows connected
users to offer hidden services or online services.
So these are basically deep net or darknet websites, and that's what most people refer to when they're
talking about Darknet or the deep net websites, even though it could mean many other anonymizing networks
and hidden services networks.
I should also note that Tor relies on onion routing.
This is a technique that was designed by the US Army in order to protect their intelligence communications.
You might want to use Tor.
Even if you don't want to access the deep net, you can literally just use it if you want to protect
your privacy and anonymity.
So why you might want to do that?
Well, let's see what happens when you connect to a website.
So let's say, for example, you open your browser and you navigate to Google.com or Facebook.com by
default without really doing or trying anything, these websites will be able to see your location,
your browser version, your operating system, and much more information.
And it doesn't stop there, for example, because you use Google to search for a lot of things.
Google can see everything you search right now and even everything that you searched before.
Not only that, but again, big websites such as Google and Facebook, they can even potentially access
your activity outside of these websites.
They use this relying on the features they offer to other websites.
For example, any website that would have a Google or a Facebook share button would have a piece of
code from Google or from Facebook running on their website.
And again, Google and Facebook use this code in order to see which websites you visit.
And obviously they use that in order to serve you ads related to you.
We all know that you search for something and you start seeing it everywhere else, but it doesn't stop
there.
We've all read the Cambridge Analytica scandal and how they were able to access private information
about Facebook users.
And it doesn't even stop at this.
There are several reports reporting that websites such as Facebook creates ghost profiles, so profiles
for people that don't even have a Facebook account.
So you might think, okay, I don't have a Facebook account.
They can't really track me.
No, they still probably have a profile about you because like I said, any website that you visit that
has a Facebook like button or a Facebook share button will collect data about you.
And Facebook is not going to stop there.
They will create a profile.
They'll add some name to it or some identity to it, and they'll have all the things related to you
what you like, what websites you visit, what did you purchase recently, and so on.
This is only what's been reported.
So you can only imagine what's happening without getting caught and without being reported.
So what's the solution?
Well, Thor is actually a pretty good solution to prevent this.
So when you connect to Tor, you can imagine Tor being this really big network and it has a large number
of servers.
So each circle in here is literally a server in the Tor network.
So you'll connect to Tor and let's say you want to go to Google.com.
What's going to happen is your request is going to bounce over three different servers or three different
nodes before it goes to Google.
So Google can only see the last node or the last server or the last computer that the request was sent
from.
It can't see you or the original user.
Keep in mind that these servers are shared.
So at any point of time there would be millions of users using the Tor network.
So there would be lots of requests going in and out of each node.
So when you're going into this node, you're not the only user accessing this node.
So there are lots of requests coming in and out of here, same in here and same in here.
So this node could potentially be sending thousands of requests out to a number of websites.
Therefore, whatever website these requests are going to, it is very hard for it to profile that request
or to know where that request came from.
Also, data sent within the Tor network is always encrypted, so you can see the green arrows in here.
These represent encrypted data and the only two times where your data is sent unencrypted is the red
arrows.
So it's when you try to send something to the terror network and it's when data leave the Tor network.
This arrow right here is not very important because if the Target website uses https or if you're using
a browser plugin that forces https, then this data right here will be encrypted by HTTPS, by SSL.
So the only point where your data is sent unencrypted is when you're sending data to Tor.
Also keep in mind, whenever you're sending data to Tor, even with to your Internet service provider,
they can see that you're trying to access Tor, but they won't be able to see the websites you're trying
to access.
So all they'll be able to see is this person right here is trying to access Tor, but they won't really
be able to see that you're trying to go to Google.com.
So even if there was a hacker or even if there was censorship in place, they really won't be able to
see which websites you're going to.
They'll only be able to see that you're accessing the Tor network.