With the advent of Internet, people can access anything and everything from anywhere without any cost. Internet is a boon to many people. It's more of a necessity than a simple wish currently. There's nothing you can't do with the use of Internet. From banking to communication, from gaming to the browsing, from transferring money to accessing documents. Everything is possible with the use of Internet.
But there's also a dark side of everything and with time people want to access and try to use that dark feature, sometimes out of curiosity and sometimes because of some illegal intentions.
With those intentions people develop some ways to access some dark stuff on Internet and one of those way is TOR which allows you to keep your identity anonymous when accessing the Internet for whatever purpose.
What is TOR?
TOR is a short form of Onion router and initially a worldwide network of servers developed by the US Navy which allows people to use and access internet anywhere anonymously. Today, it is a non-profit organisation whose main objective is research and development of tools related to online privacy.
TOR network makes your identity anonymous, by moving your IP address across different servers so that it can't be traced back to you. People would only see the general TOR servers address instead of your specific computer IP address.
How To Use TOR Network?
There nothing difficult to use the TOR network. You just have to download the TOR browser and whatever you do in that browser, it'll go through the TOR servers and your identity remains hidden during the whole time. But yeah, TOR browser is very slow because of all the people are using it worldwide, so your internet connection will react a bit slow in TOR browser.
Who Can Use TOR Servers?
Anyone. If you're a hacker who wants to remain hidden from the government hands or just an ethical hacker who is given a work which needed some anonymity, you can use TOR browser for sure. It's free and easy to use by anyone. Also, if you're fed up the advertisements on Internet, you can use TOR to get rid of it.
Downside of Using TOR?
Just because you're using TOR, it doesn't mean you can't be detected ever. Of course you can be detected. With enough work, government agencies can detect you with ease if they found you working on something malicious. In fact, its easy to detect your TOR browser instead of TOR servers. Government can easily hack into your TOR browser and can see what are you accessing or if it's malicious, they can track you back to your IP.
So, TOR is not foolproof. Its also have a downside and you can't ignore that.
Should You Use it?
If you're a normal user who just download small contents and use internet for your daily work, then TOR is not for you. Because it'll make your connection slow and if you're downloading large then definitely it'll make some problme for you. In case of large files, use Bit Torrent instead.
But if you really want to remain anonymous and want to keep your identity hidden, then TOR can do the trick for you.
But please use it with your own risk. Don't do some illegal stuff. TOR is not foolproof as I have said earlier, you can be traced back with some efforts and can be punished for your illegal activities. Have caution while using it.