Security News > 2020 > August > Tor and anonymous browsing – just how safe is it?

More than] 23% of the Tor network's exit capacity has been attacking Tor users.

So let's look quickly at how Tor works, how crooks might abuse it, and just how scary the abovementioned headline really is.

A VPN encrypts all your network traffic and relays it in scrambled form to a VPN server run by your VPN provider, where it's unscrambled and "Injected" onto the internet as if it originated from that VPN server.

A pool of computers, offered up by volunteers around the world, act as anonymising relays to provide what is essentially a randomised, multi-tunnel "Mix-and-mystery" VPN for people who browse via the Tor network.

For most of the past year the total number of relays available to the Tor network has wavered between about 6000 and 7000, with every Tor circuit that's set up using three relays, largely at random, to form a sort-of three-tunnel VPN. Your computer chooses which relays to use, not the network itself, so there is indeed a lot of ever-changing mix-and-mystery involved in bouncing your traffic through the Tor network and back.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/08/13/tor-and-anonymous-browsing-just-how-safe-is-it/