This action is called tunneling, which hides your traffic from interceptors such as your ISP or the government. What is a VPN?Ī VPN or virtual private network is a software that encrypts your traffic and routes it through a random server. It’s a direct competitor to mainstream browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Firefox. Today, when we talk about Tor, we mean the browser. Tor Browser was launched in 2008 and has been synonymous with Tor since then. Your connection is automatically routed through the Tor network, thus hiding your IP address and traffic. You can use the browser to surf the web privately. Tor Browser is the project’s flagship product. Because of its multi-layered encryption, Tor is wrongly considered a free VPN. No, Tor is not a VPN but it works like one and has similar operations and applications. Criminals may still use sophisticated methods to hack the Tor network for traffic surveillance. While Tor has its shortcomings, you should know that its main aim is to prevent traffic analysis. Your traffic is encrypted over and over again, thus mimicking the construction of the vegetable. This decentralized network is called onion routing because of its multi-layered infrastructure. Neither can they see or analyze the content of the traffic. Anyone who might want to track you cannot link back the activities to you. Such a decentralized network tunnels and encrypts your traffic, detaching you from your web activities. When you use Tor, your web traffic moves through these independent nodes. Tor works using relays (or nodes) managed by volunteers spread across the globe. Officially known as the Tor Project, it utilizes the onion routing technology to encrypt and conceal your traffic.

Tor is a free and open-source software founded in 2002 designed to help browse the web anonymously. Let’s settle the Tor versus VPN debate once and for all. And that is what this short guide is about. Of course, there are a lot of moving parts in this comparison. You should ideally choose the one that fits your needs and budget.

Tor is free, independent, and open-source, whereas a VPN is a commercial software. While a VPN uses a proprietary server to mask your IP address, Tor uses a decentralized relay network (called onion router). The main difference between a VPN and Tor is how they hide your traffic. Since the underlying tech is similar, we must consider their differences carefully.

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