Is TOR a trustworthy browser in terms of privacy?

Kenneth_Crayton

I’ve read on wikipedia that TOR was created by the NSA. Even so, is it still good private & anonymous browsing? Edit: what would be a good alternative?

Marco_Weiss

Yes, it's true that it was created by the NSA (big spyware agency), but it's important to know the history and verify the source code. The whole TOR project was released as open source code and anyone can host a node.

TOR was originally created to provide anonymity for CIA agents, only problem is, had TOR been a proprietary software nobody else than CIA would have trusted it, and hence if you as a site owner saw TOR in the user agent, you'd immediately know it's a CIA agent visiting your site.

This is the reason it was released to the public, so that CIA agents could hide in plain sight. On the down side for the US government, this also provided a anonymity solution for regular people, if used correctly should be mentioned.

Boris_Zaitseva

If used with caution yes, TOR itself will not guarantee anonymity, but it can be used to achive perfect anonymity.

Frederik_Madsen

That depends on how you use it, a TOR circuit typically pass through 3 nodes who knows nothing but from where the package came from and where it shall be sent. The end node use whatever protocol you initiated the connection with, so if that protocol is not encrypted, you'll be about as safe as you are on McDonalds free wifi trying to login to your remote home server over ftp.

Use common sense, only encrypted protocols, treat it like a public wifi connection. And avoid connecting to KYC services over the same connection, such as facebook, twitter or similar sites.